P late XLVIII.
ONCIDIUM BARKERI.
Onoidium Barkeri. Lindley in Botanical Register fa r 1841, no. 174 of the
Miscellaneous matter.
Of the great genus ©ncidium most of the species have flowers sufficiently large and gaily
coloured to render them plants of striking beauty: but among them are a few pre-eminent in this
respect, and of these the species now figured may be regarded as one of the finest. In the size of
the flowers it is only equalled by O. Papilio, Insleayi, and a few Peruvian species ; in the brilliancy
of the yellow lip it is not inferior to O. bifolium, while the rich spotting of the sepals and petals is
only equalled by O. Papilio itself.
At present the species is of the rarest occurrence, having only flowered in the, collections of
Mr. Barker, who imported it from Mexico, and of Mrs. Lawrence of Ealing Park.
Its PSEUDO-BULBS are exactly oval, compressed, blunt-edged, with a furrow or two passing down
each side. The leaves are small for the size of the plant, two to each pseudo-bulb, of an oblong-,
lanceolate form, with a long sheathing striated footstalk, which is distinctly articulated in the middle.
The scape is terminal, a very unusual circumstance in Oncidium, with about three sheaths on the
part which supports the flowers. The latter are disposed in a simple curved raceme, and are
from five to seven in number. The sepals and petals are alike in form and colour, linear-lanceolate,
wavy, spreading or turned back: the lateral very slightly adhering at the base; they are covered,
with deep rich brown spots and bands on a pale cinnamon-coloured ground. The lip is pure yellow,
without a single spot, much paler on the under side, and longer than the sepals ; its middle lobe is
very large, broader than long, slightly pointed at the apex, which nevertheless curves inwards in the
manner usual in this genus ; it is distinctly stalked ; the lateral lobes are flat, oblong, truncated with
rounded angles, and not more than a third the breadth of the middle lobe. The crest (fig. 1.)
consists of an anterior tubercle, which is slightly three-lobed and hollowed out in front, and of a
depressed two-lobed elevation immediately behind it. The column is unusually short, pale yellow,
with a pair of rounded oblong wings.
At Plate XXV. of this work an attempt having been made to distinguish on more satisfactory
grounds than before the genera Cyrtochilum and Oncidium, I now feel bound to state that the
examination of more species, and a very full revision of these and the neighbouring genera, has
satisfied me that the reasons assigned in the place referred to are unsatisfactory, and that Cyrtochilum
cannot be longer regarded as having a claim to stand as more thn an artificial section of Oncidium.
It will be remembered that this genus was established by Messrs. Humboldt and Kunth, in their
Nova Genera et Species Plantarum, upon two species with stalked petals and an undivided lip,
characters certainly very striking in several Peruvian and other species. But there are so many
insensible gradations by which the form of the petals and labellum varies in the numerous forms of
Oncidium, that those distinctions cannot be maintained, and all others substituted in lieu of them
have equally failed when applied to practice. In the attempt, too, to modify the character of Cyrtochilum,
species have been introduced which would be more properly stationed elsewhere; these are