_Epid. prismatocarpum_,
also, is a lovely thing, with narrow dagger-like sepals and petals,
creamy-yellow, spotted black, lip mauve or violet, edged with pale
yellow.
Of the many hot Dendrobiums, Australia supplies a good proportion. There
is _D. bigibbum_, of course, too well known for description; it dwells
on the small islands in Torres Straits. This species flowered at Kew so
early as 1824, but the plant died. Messrs. Loddiges, of Hackney,
re-introduced it thirty years later. _D. Johannis_, from Queensland,
brown and yellow, streaked with orange, the flowers curiously twisted.
_D. superbiens_, from Torres Straits, rosy purple, edged with white, lip
crimson. Handsomest of all by far is _D. phaloenopsis_. It throws out a
long, slender spike from the tip of the pseudo-bulb, bearing six or more
flowers, three inches across. The sepals are lance-shaped, and the
petals, twice as broad, rosy-lilac, with veins of darker tint; the lip,
arched over by its side lobes, crimson-lake in the throat, paler and
striped at the mouth. It was first sent home by Mr. Forbes, of Kew
Gardens, from Timor Lauet, in 1880. But Mr. Fitzgerald had made drawings
of a species substantially the same, some years before, from a plant he
discovered on the property of Captain Bloomfield, Balmain, in
Queensland, nearly a thousand miles south of Timor. Mr. Sander caused
search to be made, and he has introduced Mr.
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