Lycaste cruenta Lind.

Horticultural & Botanical History

‘It was found by Mr. Skinner in Guatemala, and sent to his friends as a large variety of M. aromatica, to which it certainly bears much resemblance.  The following circumstances however will readily distinguish it.  The leaves are broader; the flowers are four times as large when in health; the lip has quite a different form, with a deep crimson blotch at its base, and is not half the length of the sepals; the middle lobe is rounded not unguiculate, and only a small tubercle in the middle instead of the large concave appendage that occurs in M. aromatica. […] As may be expected, the habits of this very fine species are the same as those of M. aromatica, and it requires the same treatment.  It does very well in the cool orchidaceous stove, where plants from Mexico and Guatemala are now generally grown, and wants a season of dryness after it has made its pseudo-bulbs, but plenty of water during its growth.  The flowering time is winter and spring.  The finest specimen I have yet seen flowered with Sir C. Lemon at Carclew, where one of the flower-stalks bore two blossoms, a very unusual circumstance among the species with this habit. [BR t.13/1842].  [BR Misc.16/1843].  Introduced to Britain in 1841.  [JD].

History at Camden Park

Listed in the 1850 and 1857 catalogues [O.37/1850].  Requested from Loddiges’ Nursery on 1st February, 1849 [MP A2933-1, p.185] and obtained from them, brought out from England by Captain P. P. King in that year.  [ML A1980-3]. 

Notes