NOTICES OF BOTANICAL PUBLICATIONS. 
427 
longer one, or that it has ever been used as an approach to the house; 
but, as far as I can learn, was planted for the express purpose of a 
shady walk and place of retirement, and also to form a distinct feature, 
and thereby add to the other interesting disposition of the pleasure- 
ground. Yours truly. 
A. B. 
NOTICES OF BOTANICAL PUBLICATIONS. 
Edwards’s Botanical Register, continued by Br. Lindley. 
October, 1st, 1835. 
1. Coryanthes maculata. Spotted Coryanthes. A splendid orchi- 
deous plant, and one of the most curious, in the distorted shape of its 
sepals and petals, of the whole order. “ It is a native of the woods 
of Demerara, where it is not uncommonly found, hanging from the 
branches of trees, and suspending in the air the singular lips of its 
flowers, like fairy buckets filled with honey, distilled into them from two 
horns fixed over them, and attached to the base of the column.” 
This species of epiphyte orchis has, like many of the others, what 
are called pseudo-bulbs, and the flower-stem rises from the crown of 
the roots, and hangs downwards, which the situation of the plant on 
the stem or branch of a tree so freely allows, and which could not take 
place did the plant grow on the surface of the ground. This circum¬ 
stance shows the wonderful provision of nature in adapting a plant to 
its most favourable station, or the station to the plant. Flower-stems, 
in a great majority of plants, grow upright, and are produced from 
some exposed member of the system. Many of the Orchidece, on the 
contrary, produce their flower-spike from among the roots, and have 
a tendency to grow downwards, not from laxity of fibre, or weight of 
the flower, but from, as it would appear, aversion to sunshine ; indeed 
so decidedly is the downward growth exhibited in some of them, that, 
when confined by being planted too deep in a pot of turfy soil, the 
flower-stem will force itself downward through the soil, and escape at 
the hole in the bottom, or otherwise, as is often the case, remain unex¬ 
panded, to rot unseen. It is for this reason that the best cultivators 
of these interesting plants place them on the top of a cone of proper 
compost, high above the rim of the pot, by which means the flower- 
stems have a chance of protruding through the sides of the cone, and 
showing their beauty in the air. 
This plant differs from the C. speciosa and the C. macrantha , 
which has lately flowered at Mr. Knight’s exotic nursery, Chelsea, 
