ODONT.!
(An Ode to the Modern Flora.)
Oh, Flora, fair Goddess of Flowers, skies brighten, the gardens are glowing,
And lo! 'tis the season of Flower Shows, when everything seems "All-a-blowing!"
And what the dickens you've been up to with the dictionary, I'm dashed if there's any possibility of knowing.
Talk about "Volapück." Why, it isn't a circumstance compared with the floral goddess's crack-jaw.
I've been trying to read the account of a Flower Show to my wife. Now, at patter-songs I've a slick tongue and slack jaw.
I can do "John Wellington Wells" pretty patly; but to read through a horticultural article
Would give an alligator instantaneous tetanus; and of meaning the words seem to have no particle.
I should like to be introduced, in its Bornean home, to the glorious plant called Cælo Dyana.
But fancy a footman having to announce Madame SPATHOGLOTTIS KIMBALLIANA!
Odont. Uro-Skinneri sounds like something medical and epidermic, but then we're informed that its sepals and petals
Are "reticulated in tender brown and broad rosy-mauve," which immediately sends one "off the metals."
The Masdevallias may be a respectable family, though I should not care to marry into it,
But "the hybrid M. Mundyana representing M. Veitchii × M. Ignea" (though "a wonderfully glowing orange" by all accounts), sounds so exceedingly mixed and mongrel that I'd certainly eschew it.
"A noble Catt: Gigas" sounds rather aristocratic: "Catt: Jacomb," I suppose, is a sort of a relative;
But Od. Citrosmum, sounds awfully odd, and is not my notion of a reassuring appellative.
And what are you to make of Odont. crisp. Sanderæ, which, whomsoever "Sanderæ" may be, I don't want to "crisp" him;
"A sport of nature unequalled" they call him, and no doubt his name is, for I can neither clearly articulate, stutter or lisp him.
I've not a doubt that, whoever he is, he is probably liked and considered by some a gem.
Gyp. Chamberlainianum has a political sound, and has a strong savour of a floral Brummagem.
And then comes "Odont. vex. Bleui splendidissimum," which sounds like an appeal for "Two Lovely Blue Eyes."
But if it means something entirely different, I shall hear it without the smallest surprise.
In fact, looking further, I find, it's "an artificial hybrid from Odont. vexillarium × Odont. Roezlii." That's a staggerer.
But Dend. phalænopsis Schroderæ Dellense is a still bigger horticultural swaggerer.
O. Coradenei! likewise O. Crispum! I only wish that your Godmother, Flora,
Would insist upon shorter and more intelligible names for her modern offspring. By bright Aurora,
I can't go on worshipping at your floral shrine if the ritual is polyglot gibberish, and what's more, I won't, Ma'am.
In the word (queerly spelt) of which you seem very fond, I earnestly say, Flower Goddess, Odont. Ma'am!!!
