Altogether this is a most desirable plant, and being easy of cultivation, and of remarkably free-flowering habit, it should find a place in every collection.
AËRIDES LOBBII. [Plate 21.] Native of Moulmein.
Epiphytal. _Stems_ erect, densely foliose, producing the stout aërial roots from between the leaf bases. _Leaves_ evergreen, close set, distichous, leathery in texture, loriform, channelled, obliquely bilobed at the apex, of a deep green colour, obsoletely spotted with purple, paler on the under surface. _Racemes_ axillary, many-flowered, long, branched, cylindrical, pendulous. _Flowers_ very numerous, medium-sized, fragrant, the sepals and petals white, flushed with rosy purple and spotted with deeper rose-purple, the broader lip with a bar of rosy purple, darkest in the centre, from base to apex, and bordered with white; _sepals_ and _petals_ elliptic-oblong, nearly equal, incurved; _lip_ much larger, clawed, the claw hollowed out and coadunate with the base of the column, the limb ovate or somewhat lozenge-shaped, wavy at the margin; _spur_ arcuate, somewhat compressed laterally. _Column_ short, in form resembling the neck and beak of a bird, with the front edge produced and folded over the stigmatic cavity.
Aërides Lobbii, _Hort. Veitch_; _Lemaire_, _Illustration Horticole_, xv., t. 559; _Williams_, _Orchid Growers’ Manual_, ed. 5, 67; _Rand_, _Orchids_, 149; _Britten & Gower_, _Orchids for Amateurs_, 177.
This very beautiful brightly-coloured plant was discovered in Moulmein by Mr. Thomas Lobb, who sent it to the Messrs. Veitch & Sons, of Chelsea, about the year 1856. It is of remarkably free-flowering and decorative character, and is no doubt one of the most beautiful species of this fine genus of Orchids, being valuable alike on account of its compact-growing habit, and the strikingly ornamental nature of its inflorescence. There appear to be several varieties of this plant distributed through our Orchid collections, all of them handsome and deserving of cultivation, but that which we now illustrate, from a finely grown, elegantly branching spike, kindly sent to us by C. J. Hill, Esq., of Nottingham, and referred to in the note published under Plate 15, is the finest form, and the most freely bloomed specimen we have met with. We were, in truth, charmed with the size and colour of the flowers of this plant, when recently inspecting Mr. Hill’s collection, the long spikes of blossom which were produced by so small a plant being quite extraordinary.