20 



THE ORCHID WORLD. 



GRAMMATOPHYLLUM SPECIOSUM. 



THIS wonderful Orchid is very rarely 

 seen in cultivation, for the enormous 

 size which the plant must attain 

 before flowering prevents its inclusion in our 

 comparatively small houses. Mr. A. Keyser, 

 Selangor, records {Gardeners Chronicle, 

 1890, 1., ip. 265) a large plant which he found 

 growing on a Durian tree, and which re- 

 quired (fifteen men to move it. It measured 

 /ft. 2in. high and l3Aft. across, and carried 

 seven spikes of bloom, the longest 

 being 8ft. 6in. high. Mr. J. H. Veitch 

 records one in the Botanic Gardens 

 at Penang as 42ift. in circumference, the 

 stems from six to seven feet long, and one 

 of the preceding year's racemes, of which 

 there were thirty, 7ift. long. 



In the Buitenzorg Botanic Garden, Java, 

 a huge specimen grew on the trunk of a 

 Canary tree. The specimen flowered in 

 1892, and produced about 50 flower spikes, 

 each of them bearing 60 to 100 blossoms. 

 Mr. Ridley records a plant which was 



THREE USEFUL 



DENDROBIUM infundibulum is a most 

 beautiful species for supplying pure- 

 white flowers for decorative purposes. 

 It belongs to the nigro-hirsute, or black- 

 haired, stem section of the genus, and derives 

 its specific name from the resemblance which 

 the base of the lip has to a funnel. The long 

 slender bulbs are usually about two feet in 

 height, with narrow, acute, unequally bi-lobed 

 leaves. The flowers, which are borne in 

 great profusion during the spring months, are 

 large, usually four inches across, pure-white, 

 with an orange-coloured anchor-shaped blotch 

 in the broad part of the throat. 



Dendrobium Jamesianum, named in honour 

 of the late Mr. James Veitch, is considered 

 by some to be a variety of D. infundibulum. 

 It has rarely, if ever, been found growing 

 with it, each species being confined to its own 

 range of mountains in Moulmein, and there 

 are also many distinctive points. The bulbs 

 are stouter, not nearly so high, the nigro- 



brought down from Malacca to Singapore, 

 and weighed, with the portion of the tree on 

 which it grew, three-quarters of a ton. 

 Specimens in the Penang and Singapore 

 Gardens measure over forty feet in circum- 

 ference. 



The flowering season is August and Sept- 

 ember, but it has rarely flowered in Eng- 

 land, the most noteworthy occasion being in 

 August, 1897, when it produced a spike of 

 more than 70 flowers in the collection of Sir 

 Trevor Lawrence, Burford. 'Mr. W. H. 

 White, who had charge of the plant, was 

 ordered to make more room for the fast 

 increasing collection by destroying this 

 specimen. The plant, however, only had its 

 roots severely cut back, and was tightly 

 squeezed into a much smaller pot. This pro- 

 cedure, whether by < the sudden check or 

 otherwise, caused the plant to produce the 

 previously mentioned flower spike, which 

 developed at the rate of six inches in 

 twenty-four hours. 



DENDROBIUMS. 



hirsute nature is more discernible, and the 

 flowers have a cinnabar stain on the lip, the 

 side lobes of which are asperated. Both 

 infundibulum and Jamesianum are high 

 mountain species, and succeed admirably in 

 the cool house during the summer months, 

 but being usually winter-growing species a 

 somewhat higher temperature is advisable 

 during this period. 



Dendrobium formosum is a compact- 

 growing species with stoutish black-haired 

 stems about a foot high. The leaves are 

 thick and broader than either infundibulum 

 or Jamesianum, and the flowers, which last 

 more than a month in perfection, are pure- 

 white with a bright-yellow furrow down the 

 centre of the lip. This species is widely 

 distributed on the low-lying hills at Amherst, 

 and enjoys a considerably higher temperature 

 than either of the previously mentioned 

 species. 



