Dendrobium cucumerinum Macleay ex Lindl.

Horticultural & Botanical History

‘Exactly as our specimen of this curious plant was, by the kindness of Capt. Philip King, R.N., received by us from Australia, we have represented it, growing from the same branch of a tree that it was imported upon in a good flowering state.  The flowers, though large in proportion to the plant, are far from showy.  The remarkable feature of the plant is the close resemblance the leaves (as Dr. Lindley is inclined to consider them) rather than pseudo-bulbs, bear to a collection of little tuberculated cucumbers or rather girkins; if they are pseudo-bulbs, then this plant bears no real leaves.  That they are not pseudobulbs seems the more probable, from the fact that the peduncles do not spring from any portion of them.  Our drawing was made in March 1851, in the Orchideous House of the Kew Gardens.’  [BM t.4619/1851]. 

Introduced to Britain in 1841.  [JD].  The Gardeners Chronicle reported that it was sent to Loddiges’ nursery by William Macleay.  [Gard. Chron. 1843].  BR f.37/1843.

History at Camden Park

Listed in the 1850 and 1857 catalogue [O.17/1850].  ‘This curious little dendrobe has only been obtained, so far as I am aware, in the blue mountains, and the only situations where I have procured it are in “gullies” near Camden and at Picton.’  [Fitzgerald].  Probably collected locally.

Notes