P late X IV .
CYMBIDIUM ELEGANS.
Cymbidium elegans. hindi, in Wallich. Cat. no. 7854. Genera et Species Orch. 163.
A native of Nepal, where it was discovered by Dr. Wallicli in 1821. The accompanying figure
has been copied from a drawing in the possession of the Honourable Court of Directors of the East
India Company, corrected from dried specimens.
This is much the finest of the Indian Cymbidia, as is evident from the figure. At present
nothing is known of its history or structure beyond what is here represented.
The leaves are from one and a half to two feet long, and not more than three-eighths or half an
inch wide, acuminate and very obliquely emarginate at the point ; in texture they are as stout
as a European Typha, and when dry, have about three principal veins on each side of the mid-rib ;
at the base they combine into a broad, fleshy sort of bulb. The scape arises from near the base of
the leaves, is about eighteen inches long, and so loaded with flowers for half its length, that it hangs
down in a pendulous manner ; below the flowers it is loosely covered with long, inflated, acuminate,
imbricated scales, which abruptly change into small, narrow, scale-like bracts. The raceme is from
six to ten or eleven inches long, nodding, cylindrical, very compactly covered with pale salmon-coloured
flowers, each rather more than one inch and a half long, and greenish before they expand. The
sepals and petals form a kind of inverted cone, so little do they open ; they are linear-oblong,
acute, and of the same figure, but the petals are the shorter and narrower. The lip is parallel
with the column, obovate, straight, wedge-shaped at the base, divided at the point into three acute
lobes, of which the middle one is the broadest and longest ; it is of the same colour as the sepals, but
is a little spotted with red. Along its centre there runs a double; elevated line (fig- !■ ) which is
separated near the basé into two spreading lamellae. The column is very long, clavate, half-terete,
with a convex plain anther, a little prolonged in front, (fig. 2.) The pollen-masses are two,
pear-shaped, furrowed out at the back, and planted separately upon a transversely oval gland. In
this respect the present species differs somewhat from other true Cymbidia ; but not sufficiently
to deserve being made into a distinct genus.