THE PHALAENOPSIS HOUSE
Phalaenopsis are noted for whimsicality. They flourish in holes and corners where no experienced gardener would put them, and they flatly refuse to live under all the conditions most approved by science. Most persons who grow them have such adventures to tell, their own or reported. Sir Trevor Lawrence mentioned at the Orchid Conference that he once built a Phalaenopsis house at the cost of £600; after a few months’ trial he restored his plants to their old unsatisfactory quarters and turned this beautiful building to another purpose. The authorities at Kew tell the same story with rueful merriment. In both cases, the situation, the plan, every detail, had been carefully and maturely weighed, with intimate knowledge of the eccentricities to be dealt with and profound respect for them. Upon the other hand, I could name a ‘grower’ of the highest standing who used to keep his Phalaenopsis in a ramshackle old greenhouse belonging to a rough market-gardener of the neighbourhood—perhaps does still. How he came to learn that they would thrive there as if under a blessed spell I have forgotten. But once I paid the market-gardener a visit and there, with my own eyes, beheld them flourishing under conditions such that I do not expect a plain statement of the facts to be believed. In the midst of the rusty old ruin was a stand with walls of brick; above this wires had been fixed along the roof. The big plants hung lowest. Upon the edges of their baskets smaller plants were poised, and so they stood, one above another, like a child’s house of cards—I am afraid to say how high. A labouring man stood first at one end, then at the other, and cheerfully plied the syringe. They were not taken down nor touched from month to month.
Seeing and hearing all this, I cried—but the reader can imagine what I cried.
‘Well,’ replied the market-gardener, ‘I don’t understand your orchids. But I shouldn’t ha’ thought they was looking poorly.’
Poorly! Under these remarkable circumstances some scores of Phalaenopsis were thriving as I never saw them elsewhere.
In this house they do very well, growing and flowering freely, giving no trouble by mysterious ailments. We have most of the large species—amabilis, Stuartiana, Schilleriana, Sanderiana, etc. No description of these is required. Hybrids of Phalaenopsis are few as yet. Here is Hebe, the product of rosea × Sanderiana, rosy white of sepal and petal, bright pink of lip, yellow at the base.
On the left is a ‘rockery’ of tufa, planted with the hybrid Anthuriums which Messrs. Sander have been producing so industriously of late years. To my mind, an infant could make flowers as good as Anthuriums, if equipped with a sufficient quantity of sealing-wax, red and pink and white. Their form is clumsy, and grace they have none. But when they recognise a fashion, the wise cease to protest. Anthuriums are the fashion.
Since that is so, and many worthy persons will be interested, I name the hybrids here.
Of the Andreeanum type, raised by crossing its various forms:—Lawrenciae, pure white; Goliath, blood-red; Salmoniae, flesh-colour; Lady Godiva, white faintly tinged with flesh-colour; Albanense, deep red, spadix vermilion—this was one of the twelve ‘new plants’ which won the First Prize at the International Exhibition 1892.
Of the Rothschildianum type:—Saumon, salmon-colour; niveum, very large, whitish, with orange-red markings; aurantiacum, coloured like the yolk of egg; The Queen, evenly marked in red, orange, and white.
Overhead hang small plants of Phalaenopsis and Dendrobium; on a shelf above the Anthuriums, against the glass, two large specimens of the noble Cyp. bellatulum album—which with a despairing effort I have tried to sketch elsewhere—and no less than 380 plants of Cyp. Godefroyae, and its variety, Cyp. leucochilum, both white, heavily spotted with brownish purple.
The Vanda House
lies beyond. Only the tall species are here, for such gems as V. Kimballiana and Amesiana would be lost among these giants. But there is little to say about our Vandas beyond a general commendation of their fine stature and glossy leaves. It is not a genus which we study, and the plants belong to ordinary species—the best of their class, however. For the benefit of experts I may mention, among specimens of Vanda suavis, the Dalkeith variety, Rollison’s, Veitch’s, Wingate, and Manchester; among Vanda tricolor, planilabris—grandest of all—Dalkeith, aurea, Pattison’s, insignis, Rohaniana.
But Miss Joaquim must be mentioned (V. teres × V. Hookeriana), sepals and petals of a pretty rose colour, lip orange; a flower charming in itself, but still more notable as the product of a young lady’s enthusiasm. Miss Agnes Joaquim is the daughter of a Consul at Singapore, residing at Mount Narcis in the vicinity.