16 
Descriptive Notes on Papuan Plants. 
Dendrobium Lawesii. 
F. V. M. in Melb. Chemist, June 1884. 
Owen Stanley’s Ranges ; Rev. J. Chalmers. 
It is allied to D. trichostomum, G. Reichenb. in Linnma, 1876, p. 46. 
Dendrobium JoHNSoNiiE. 
F. V. M. in Wing’s Southern Science Record, May 1882. 
South-Eastern New Guinea ; Rev. James Chalmers. 
From access to more specimens I can now furnish some additional 
notes on this superb species, which meanwhile has also found its way 
into conservatory-cultivation. 
Root emitting elongated flexuous strong fibres ; stem erect, from 8 
inches to much higher, attenuated at the base, gradually thickened 
towards the middle and also to some extent upwards, contracted again 
at the summit, consisting of several joints, cylindrical, conspicuously 
furrowed, in small specimens only about | an inch wide at the thickest 
part, in larger specimens considerably stouter. Leaves few, terminal, 
almost ovate or lanceolatcTOvate, 2-4 inches long, thickly chartaceous, 
slightly keeled. Racemes infra-terminal, bearing few or several 
flowers ; peduncle rather slender. Gynostemiiim minutely two-horned. 
Anther operculate, blunt, ending in a depressed callus. Pollen masses 
of waxy consistence, yellow, erect, connate in two pairs, these again 
coherent, each of the constituting bodies being dimidiate-globular. 
The characteristics of the anther could only be observed on a solitary 
flower ; hence further observations are to be instituted, whether the 
structure thus far points really to Dendrobium, the other floral charac- 
teristics reminding of Phalmnopsis. It is however cognate to D. Sumneri 
(F. V. M. fr. vi. 94) and D. Phatenopsis (Fitzg. in Gardn. Chron. 1883 
p. 38 ; Austral. Orcb. part 7) ; of the latter also an excellent representation 
is given in the Bot. Mag. May 1885, where the great work on Austr. 
Orchids is referred to as “ a solitary example of an illustrated bot. publi- 
cation of a high order of merit emanating from a British Colony,” a sen- 
tence not just to science in other dominions of the British Colonial Empire. 
Dendrobium bifalcc, mentioned already in this work I. p. 14, has 
been already (1862) transferred to the genus Doritis (near Phalaenopsis) 
by the great orchidographer Dr. G. Reiehenbach in his Xenia ii. 7. 
