When in pots or baskets they require to be kept moist in their growing season, which continues during their period of flowering and some time after. When their growth is completed less water will suffice, but their stems must not be allowed to shrivel. Moreover, the soil must always be kept in a sweet condition. If the soil decays remove it and supply fresh, but in doing this carefully avoid injuring the roots. They must be grown near the glass, with very little shade—just sufficient to keep the burning sun-rays off them.
Insects must be well sought after and battled with. The White Scale will attack them, and must be eradicated, as small-growing plants like this cannot endure such enemies. Cleanliness is the chief virtue, not only in cultivating Orchids but most other plants, and clean objects are always worthy of admiration.
[Illustration: PL. 133. ANGULOA EBURNEA.]
ANGULOA EBURNEA. [Plate 133.] Native of Colombia.
Epiphytal. _Pseudobulbs_ oblong attenuated at the apex, four inches high, furrowed, dark green, sheathed while young with large leafy scales, which gradually pass into the true leaves, becoming leafless in age. _Leaves_ broadly elliptic-lanceolate acute, strongly ribbed and of thin herbaceous texture. _Scape_ stout, springing from the base of the pseudobulbs, eight to ten inches high, with one or two distinct sheathing ovate acuminate pale green bracts. _Flowers_ large, solitary at the top of the erect scape, subglobose, of a clear ivory white; _sepals_ broadly orbicular-ovate, acute, cucullately concave, the margins of the dorsal and the tips of the connivent lateral ones recurved, white; _petals_ smaller, enclosed, concave, also white; _lip_ white spotted with pink, turned up so to be parallel to the column, three-lobed, the lateral lobes broad narrowed to a point which is recurved, the middle lobe small, triangular, deflexed with a furrow down the centre. _Column_ clavate, the apex with three projecting subulate-triangular teeth directed downwards.
Anguloa eburnea, _Williams_, _Orchid Grower’s Manual_, 3 ed., 67; _Id._, ed. 5, 91.
Of this small Orchidic genus there are but few species known in cultivation. All those we have seen bear curiously-formed flowers, and are very showy. The species now before us has the flowers of an ivory white, and these when in bloom form a good contrast with the yellow flowers of _Anguloa Clowesii_ and the beautifully spotted flowers of _A. Ruckeri_ and its variety _A. Ruckeri sanguinea_, a figure of which latter plant will be found at Plate 19 of our first volume. There are besides other species, but those we have mentioned are among the most showy.