328 
G. King & D. Prain— New species of Renantliera. [No 3, 
On a new species of Renanthera. — By G. King and D. Prain, Royal 
Botanic Garden , Calcutta. 
[Read July, 3rd.] 
Some years ago Lieutenant E. J. Lngard sent to the Calcutta 
Herbarium, for identification, some dried flowers and a living plant of 
what was evidently a species of Renanthera. The living plant unfor¬ 
tunately soon died in the uncongenial climate of Calcutta; the dried 
flowers were, however, sufficient to show that the plant probably 
belonged to a species near R. coccinea , Lour. Last year Lieutenant 
J. B. Cliatterton was kind enough to send several plants of the same 
orchid to the Calcutta Garden, which were promptly transferred to the 
more suitable climate of the Cinchona Plantation in Sikkim. These 
plants flowered a few weeks ago and there is now no doubt that they 
belong to an undescribed species which from the resemblance of its 
flowers to the extended wings of a brilliantly coloured butterfly we now 
name R. Papilio. For a description of the flowers, drawn up from 
living specimens, we are indebted to Mr. R. Pantling, of the Cinchona 
Plantation, who has also made a beautiful coloured drawing of the plant. 
Renanthera Papilio, n. sp. King and Prain. Leaves loriform, 
2 to 25 in. long and about *5 in. broad; their apices blunt and 
unequally lobed. Inflorescence 9 to 10 inches long, laxly racemose, or 
rarely panicled, on stalks of about equal length or longer, the bracts 
small, the stalked ovary about 1 in. long. Dorsal sepal linear-oblong, 
contracted below the blunt sub-cucullate apex, - 75 in. long. Lateral 
sepals twice as long as the dorsal, narrowly elliptic, flat, with undulate 
edges, the inner margins touching above the slender twisted claws ; the 
apices sub-acute and divergent. Lateral petals ’5 in. long, spathulate, 
slightly incurved. Lip with acuminate-side lobes each with a small 
rounded basal auricle, the middle lobe broadly ovate, concave, its apex 
acute and pointing forwards, the base auricled. Spur short and blunt, 
with two erect toothed divergent plates near its mouth. Column 
minutely ciliate behind the anther; stigma with a thin deflected trans¬ 
parent lip. 
Assam. 
The colour of the flowers is a brilliant scarlet with a tinge of lake. 
The toothed plates of the spur end abruptly at the base of the middle 
lobe of the lip and immediately in front of their termination there are 
three blunt tooth-like processes. In its habit and the colour of its 
flowers the species resembles R. coccinea , Lour., but the flowers are 
larger and the lobing of the lip and the shape of the lateral sepals are 
very different. 
