[Plate 3.] 



DENDROBIUM SUPERBIENS. 



An Intermediate, or Cool Stove Epiphyte, belonging to the Natural Order of Orchids ; 



from North Australia. 



Specific &})KXKtttv. 



DENDROBIUM SUPERBIENS..— '■' Somewhat resembling D. Bigibbum, but has not such an anterior gibbosity to the 

 chin. It has numerous asperities over the lateral lobes of the lip ; middle column consisting of five equal plates. 

 Petals much different from L>. Bigibbum, longer, and at once narrower. Colour bright purple. " 



Gardener's Chronicle, N.S., Vol. VI., p. 516. 



THIS is the stoutest, most robust, erect-growing- species of Dendrobium hitherto 

 introduced, equally distinct in both its flowers and the general aspect of the plant. 

 The flowers — which are of a beautiful purple colour, shaded from a bright to a deeper hue,, 

 are produced from the old imported bulbs in moderately dense, large, half -nodding spikes 

 — possess not only a beauty of their own, but have a charming effect combined with other 

 Orchids, from their affording a colour rare in the family, although somewhat approached 

 by another Australian species — D. Bigibbum, a very much smaller growing plant. In 

 the aspect of the plant this Dendrobium is much more like Cyrtopodium punctatum, 

 a well-known species indigenous to both St. Domingo and Mexico, than to other members 

 of the genus Dendrobium, having immensely stout, thick pseudo-bulbs, from two to 

 two and a half feet in length, bearing equally stout, leathery leaves. Such was the 

 character of the specimen from which our illustration was taken, and which flowered 

 with Mr. B. S. Williams, at the Holloway Nurseries, in April, 1878. There appears 

 to be another form of the plant previously imported by Messrs. Veitch, of much weaker 

 growth in both the bulbs and leaves, yet alike in its erect habit ; the flowers a somewhat 

 darker shade in colour. One remarkable feature apparent in the Holloway plant was 

 that in every case the flower-stems, after blooming, grew on, forming a young plant. 

 This, as well known to cultivators of Orchids, is a very common occurrence with many 

 Dendrobes, so far as young plants being formed from the joints, or nodes, of the bulbs 

 that have not produced flowers ■ but in this the present subject differs in the flower-spike 



