About orchids

by Frederick Boyle

I will allow myself a very short digression here. It may seem unaccountable that a plant of large growth, distinct flower, and characteristic appearance, should elude the eye of persons trained to such pursuits, and encouraged to spend money on the slightest prospect of success, for half a century and more. But if we recall the circumstances it ceases to astonish. I myself spent many months in the forests of Borneo, Central America, and the West African coast. After that experience I scarcely understand how such a quest, for a given object, can ever be successful unless by mere fortune. To look for a needle in a bottle of hay is a promising enterprise compared with the search for an orchid clinging to some branch high up in that green world of leaves. As a matter of fact, collectors seldom discover what they are specially charged to seek, if the district be untravelled—the natives, therefore, untrained to grasp and assist their purpose. This remark does not apply to orchids alone; not by any means. Few besides the scientific, probably, are aware that the common Eucharis amasonica has been found only once; that is to say, but one consignment has ever been received in Europe, from which all our millions in cultivation have descended. Where it exists in the native state is unknown, but assuredly this ignorance is nobody's fault. For a generation at least skilled explorers have been hunting. Mr. Sander has had his turn, and has enjoyed the satisfaction of discovering species closely allied, as Eucharis Mastersii and Eucharis Sanderiana; but the old-fashioned bulb is still to seek.

In this third greenhouse is a large importation of Cattleya Trianæ, which arrived so late last year that their sheaths have opened contemporaneously with C. Mossiæ. I should fear to hazard a guess how many thousand flowers of each are blooming now. As the Odontoglossums cover their stage with snow wreaths, so this is decked with upright plumes of Cattleya Trianæ, white and rose and purple in endless variety of tint, with many a streak of other hue between.

Suddenly our guide becomes excited, staring at a basket overhead beyond reach. It contains a smooth-looking object, very green and fat, which must surely be good to eat—but this observation is alike irrelevant and disrespectful. Why, yes! Beyond all possibility of doubt that is a spike issuing from the axil of its fleshy leaf! Three inches long it is already, thick as a pencil, with a big knob of bud at the tip. Such pleasing surprises befall the orchidacean! This plant came from Borneo so many years ago that the record is lost; but the oldest servant of the farm remembers it, as a poor cripple, hanging between life and death, season after season. Cheerful as interesting is the discussion that arises. More like a Vanda than anything else, the authorities resolve, but not a Vanda! Commending it to the special care of those responsible, we pass on.

Here is the largest mass of Catasetum ever found, or even rumoured, lying in ponderous bulk upon the stage, much as it lay in a Guatemalan forest. It is engaged in the process of "plumping up." Orchids shrivel in their long journey, and it is the importer's first care to renew that smooth and wholesome rotundity which indicates a conscience untroubled, a good digestion, and an assurance of capacity to fulfil any reasonable demand. Beneath the staging you may see myriads of withered sticks, clumps of shrunken and furrowed bulbs by the thousand, hung above those leaf-beds mentioned; they are "plumping" in the damp shade. The larger pile of Catasetum—there are two—may be four feet long, three wide, and eighteen inches thick; how many hundreds of flowers it will bear passes computation. I remarked that when broken up into handsome pots it would fill a greenhouse of respectable dimensions; but it appears that there is not the least intention of dividing it. The farmer has several clients who will snap at this natural curiosity, when, in due time, it is put on the market.

At the far end of the house stands another piece of rockwork, another little cascade, and more marvels than I can touch upon. In fact, there are several which would demand all the space at my disposition, but, happily, one reigns supreme. This is a Cattleya Mossiæ, the pendant of the Catasetum, by very far the largest orchid of any kind that was ever brought to Europe. For some years Mr. Sander, so to speak, hovered round it, employing his shrewdest and most diplomatic agents. For this was not a forest specimen. It grew upon a high tree beside an Indian's hut, near Caraccas, and belonged to him as absolutely as the fruit in his compound. His great-grandfather, indeed, had "planted" it, so he declared, but this is highly improbable. The giant has embraced two stems of the tree, and covers them both so thickly that the bare ends of wood at top alone betray its secret; for it was sawn off, of course, above and below. I took the dimensions as accurately as may be, with an object so irregular and prickly. It measures—the solid bulk of it, leaves not counted—as nearly as possible five feet in height and four thick—one plant, observe, pulsating through its thousand limbs from one heart; at least, I mark no spot where the circulation has been checked by accident or disease, and the pseudo-bulbs beyond have been obliged to start an independent existence.

In speaking of Lœlia elegans, I said that those Brazilian islanders who have lost it might find solace could they see its happiness in exile. The gentle reader thought this an extravagant figure of speech, no doubt, but it is not wholly fanciful. Indians of Tropical America cherish a fine orchid to the degree that in many cases no sum, and no offer of valuables, will tempt them to part with it. Ownership is distinctly recognized when the specimen grows near a village. The root of this feeling, whether superstition or taste, sense of beauty, rivalry in magnificence of church displays, I have not been able to trace. It runs very strong in Costa Rica, where the influence of the aborigines is scarcely perceptible, and there, at least, the latter motive is sufficient explanation. Glorious beyond all our fancy can conceive, must be the show in those lonely forest churches, which no European visits save the "collector," on a feast day. Mr. Roezl, whose name is so familiar to botanists, left a description of the scene that time he first beheld the Flor de Majo. The church was hung with garlands of it, he says, and such emotions seized him at the view that he choked. The statement is quite credible. Those who see that wonder now, prepared for its transcendent glory, find no words to express their feeling: imagine an enthusiast beholding it for the first time, unwarned, unsuspecting that earth can show such a sample of the flowers that bloomed in Eden! And not a single branch, but garlands of it! Mr. Roezl proceeds to speak of bouquets of Masdevallia Harryana three feet across, and so forth. The natives showed him "gardens" devoted to this species, for the ornament of their church; it was not cultivated, of course, but evidently planted. They were acres in extent.

The Indian to whom this Cattleya Mossiæ belonged refused to part with it at any price for years; he was overcome by a rifle of peculiar fascination, added to the previous offers. A magic-lantern has very great influence in such cases, and the collector provides himself with one or more nowadays as part of his outfit. Under that charm, with 47l. in cash, Mr. Sander secured his first C. Mossiæ alba, but it has failed hitherto in another instance, though backed by 100l., in "trade" or dollars, at the Indian's option.

Thence we pass to a wide and lofty house which was designed for growing Victoria Regia and other tropic water-lilies. It fulfilled its purpose for a time, and I never beheld those plants under circumstances so well fitted to display their beauty. But they generate a small black fly in myriads beyond belief, and so the culture of Nymphæa was dropped. A few remain, in manageable quantities, just enough to adorn the tank with blue and rosy stars; but it is arched over now with baskets as thick as they will hang—Dendrobium, Cœlogene, Oncidium, Spathoglottis, and those species which love to dwell in the neighbourhood of steaming water. My vocabulary is used up by this time. The wonders here must go unchronicled.

We have viewed but four houses out of twelve, a most cursory glance at that! The next also is intermediate, filled with Cattleyas, warm Oncidiums, Lycastes, Cypripediums—the inventory of names alone would occupy all my space remaining. At every step I mark some object worth a note, something that recalls, or suggests, or demands a word. But we must get along. The sixth house is cool again—Odontoglossums and such; the seventh is given to Dendrobes. But facing us as we enter stands a Lycaste Skinneri, which illustrates in a manner almost startling the infinite variety of the orchid. I positively dislike this species, obtrusive, pretentious, vague in colour, and stiff in form. But what a royal glorification of it we have here!—what exquisite veining and edging of purple or rose; what a velvet lip of crimson darkening to claret! It is merely a sport of Nature, but she allows herself such glorious freaks in no other realm of her domain. And here is a new Brassia just named by the pontiff of orchidology, Professor Reichenbach. Those who know the tribe of Brassias will understand why I make no effort to describe it. This wonderful thing is yet more "all over the shop" than its kindred. Its dorsal sepal measures three inches in length, its "tail," five inches, with an enormous lip between. They term it the Squid Flower, or Octopus, in Mexico; and a good name too. But in place of the rather weakly colouring habitual it has a grand decision of character, though the tones are like—pale yellow and greenish; its raised spots, red and deep green, are distinct as points of velvet upon muslin.

In the eighth house we return to Odontoglossums and cool genera. Here are a number of Hybrids of the "natural class," upon which I should have a good deal to say if inexorable fate permitted; "natural hybrids" are plants which seem species, but, upon thoughtful examination and study, are suspected to be the offspring of kindred and neighbours. Interesting questions arise in surveying fine specimens side by side, in flower, all attributed to a cross between Odontoglossum Lindleyanum and Odontoglossum crispum Alexandræ, and all quite different. But we must get on to the ninth house, from which the tenth branches.