Edited 2 April 2007
© Nina Rach
Originally published in Garden and Forest, Vol. 6, Issue 257, 25 Jan. 1893. Original text.
"Sobralia Lucasiana (C. J. Lucas, Esq.), S. Breyeriana (Seeger & Tropp) and S. Lowii (H. Low & Co.) are all untried plants of apparently close affinity to S. macrantha."
A year later (22 Aug 1894), the same publication: "At the sale of the second part of the Pickering Lodge collection of Orchids in London last month the prices did not range as high as at the first sale, nevertheless Cattleya Mendelii Bluntii brought one hundred guineas, a magnificent specimen of Lalia crispa superba brought fifty-two guineas, Sobralia Lucasiana brought forty-six guineas, S. xantholuca alba brought forty-four guineas, Cattleya Gaskelliana alba, in flower, brought thirty-eight guineas, and so on."
This species was used in one registered hybrid: Sobralia Gatton Lily (holfordii x lucasiana), registered in 1915 by Sir Jeremiah Colman of Gatton Park in Surrey. This was Colman's second Sobralia hybrid; the first was Sobralia Colmaniae
(Veitchii x xantholeuca), registered in 1907.
Colman's orchid collection was given to the Cambridge University Botanic Garden in 1933. He died Jan. 16 1942.
According to the Royal Horticultural Society's International Orchid Register, the seed parent was Sobralia holfordii and the pollen parent was Sobralia lucasiana.
This species is listed in several collections, so it may still be in cultivation:
W. Watson (25 January 1893) "Foreign Correspondence. The New Plants of I892.-Orchids." in: Garden and Forest, Vol. 6, Issue 257, p. 41, 25 Jan. 1893. Published weekly by The Garden and Forest Publishing Co., Tribune Building, New York. Original text.
___ (22 August 1894) "Notes." in: Garden and Forest, Vol. 7, Issue 339, p. 340, 22 August 1894. Published weekly by The Garden and Forest Publishing Co., Tribune Building, New York. Original text
ING: Index Nominum Genericorum, URL: http://ravenel.si.edu/botany/ing/ingForm.cfm from the U.S. National Herbarium, Dept. of Systematic Biology - Botany, Smithsonian Institution
International Plant Names Index [IPNI]:
http://www.ipni.org
