The Orchid Album, Volume 3: Comprising Coloured Figures and Descriptions of New, Rare, and Beautiful Orchidaceous PlantsMoore, Thomas
Science
The Orchid Album, Volume 3: Comprising Coloured Figures and Descriptions of New, Rare, and Beautiful Orchidaceous Plants
Moore, Thomas
Orchids; Orchids -- Pictorial works
_Thunia Marshalliana_, like its congeners is a free-growing plant,
furnished with tall red stems. These stems are of annual duration only,
and grow from two to three feet in height, perishing as soon as the
flowering and growth is completed; they are thickly clothed with
distichous leaves, which are of a pale glaucous green colour, and three
inches or more in length. The flowers are produced in large terminal
spikes, and have the sepals and petals white, and the lip white,
beautifully veined and fringed with deep orange colour, margined with
white. The plant generally blooms in June and July, and continues
flowering on for several weeks; it makes a fine decorative subject, as
well as a fine plant for the exhibition table. We have more than once
seen some noble specimens shown at the Whitsuntide National Show of the
Royal Botanic and Horticultural Society of Manchester.
We figured the charming _Thunia Bensoniæ_ in our second volume at Plate
67, where will be found a full account of the treatment given to that
beautiful species. _T. Marshalliana_ requires a similar mode of
cultivation, and is propagated in the same manner.
Oncidium Lanceanum, a very handsome variety of which is figured on the
preceding Plate, was first discovered in Surinam by John H. Lance, Esq.,
by whom it was brought to England in the year 1834. In a letter quoted
by Dr. Lindley in the _Transactions of the Horticultural Society of
London_ (2 ser. ii, 100, t. 5.), Mr. Lance states that he first found it
growing on the trunk of a large Tamarind tree, near the Government
House, and that he subsequently met with a number of the plants in
different parts of the colony, generally attached to the stems or
branches of Tamarind, Sapodilla or Calabash trees. With him it failed to
grow in rotten wood and light earth, but grew well when fastened to the
branches of the Orange, the Soursop, the Mammee, and even the
_Brugmansia arborea_, producing vigorous stems with upwards of twenty
blossoms on each.
The scent of the blossom Mr. Lance goes on to state “is extremely
fragrant, and is retained after the flower is dried, only becoming
fainter and more of a spicy flavour than when fresh. The plant remains
in full beauty from ten or twelve days—a long period in that climate;
and I found that it always required a shady situation, and a living stem
to grow upon, without which it would not produce its flowers in the
highest perfection.” Dr. Lindley, in one place, compares the fragrance
to that of the Garden Pink, and in another to that of Vanilla.
[Illustration: PL. 131.
ODONTOGLOSSUM NEVADENSE.]
ODONTOGLOSSUM NEVADENSE.
[Plate 131.]
Native of New Grenada.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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