It is hardly to be wondered at that orchids have their insects; the wonder is they do not possess them in greater numbers, the flowers themselves so resemble insects and strange creatures of the air. I can scarcely define which attracts me most, the singular flowers or the fantastic odors they exhale. Perfumes of lilacs and primroses—lilacs and primroses thrice intensified—greet me when Oncidium incurvum and Dendrobium heterocarpum are in bloom. The redolence of jasmines, jonquils, and cyclamens is combined in many of the Cattleyas, while Odontoglossum gloriosum seems a whole hawthorn hedge in flower. I open the door of the warm-house when the Vandas are in bloom, and I know not what subtle overpowering fragrance weighs down the air. What a sachet and censer of perfume! what a spice-box of the Orient! Cleopatra might have just passed through. Such strange odors! languorous, sensuous, all but intoxicating! I expect to hear a tom-tom’s beat, or the rustle of a houri’s skirt. Some of the Stanhopeas, how powerful their scent—a pot-pourri of all the gums of Brazil! The suave yet pungent aroma exhaled by one of the Oncidiums (O. ornithorhynchum), I can never get enough of. Its insidious, delicious fragrance defies analysis; it haunts me like an unremembered dream or a thought that has escaped. Intensely red flowers are seldom odorous; the brilliant Sophronites—some of them the purest essence of scarlet—are scentless. The Phalænopsis, too, although among the most floriferous of orchids, are likewise inodorous.
It is fascinating to attempt to trace the resemblance of some of the odors. G. W. Septimus Piesse would be at a loss to place many of them or to determine their combination. Some, on the contrary, are distinctly like many well-known and grateful odors, though generally much more pronounced. From Dendrobium aureum and Cattleya gigas there rises a triple extract of violets; from Cattleya citrina, a strong fragrance of limes; from D. scabrilingue, a delicious breath of wall-flowers; from D. moschatum, a pronounced musk-like scent. Besides Odontoglossum gloriosum, both Burlingtonia fragrans and Trichopilia suavis emit a perfume of hawthorn. One of the Zygopetalums smells like hyacinths, one of the Oncidiums like cinnamon, one of the Catasetums like anise. The straw-colored flowers of C. scurra have a pronounced perfume of lemons. Cymbidium Mastersii is charged with the odor of almonds. Dendrobium incurvum is distinctly jasmine scented. A mellifluous essence of cyclamen clusters about D. Dominianum. Not a few orchids smell like honey, while in others I can plainly trace the scent of elder flower, heliotrope, the wild grape, sweet pea, vanilla, tuberose, honeysuckle, lily of the valley, and various tropical fruits, like the pine-apple, banana, and Monstera. The majority of the Vandas and Stanhopeas, and not a few of the Cattleyas, are puzzling to place.
Form is scarcely less strange than odor in many orchids, most of the species bearing a pronounced or faint resemblance to some form of bird, insect, or animal life. The Masdevallias and Maxillarias, how like the walking-stick and water-skaters many of them are! My primrose-scented Dendrobium looks like a flock of lovely buff-colored moths ready to take flight from the stems. The ivory-white flowers of Angræcum sesquipidale, whose perfume so strongly resembles that of the white garden lily, look like a starfish. These Stanhopeas, whose emanations are almost overpowering and whose spikes emerge from the bottom of their suspended baskets, remind me of serpents in the form and spots of their fleshy, purplish or orange-dyed flowers. The flowers of the species Anguloa resemble a bull’s head; those of Cycnoches Loddigesii, a swan. In the white waxen flower of Peresteria elata I trace the symbol of immortality—a dove with expanded wings; in the terrestrial Ophrys I almost hear the humming of its bees. Many species closely resemble spiders and beetles; others seem almost an exact counterfeit of various moths and butterflies—there is no end to the strange resemblances.
Color is scarcely less strange than odor and form. These abnormal spots and blotches, these oddly tipped petals and painted sepals, I meet in no other flower. The lily, Sternbergia, and anemone have each been singled out as the candidate for the honor of being referred to in the twenty-ninth verse of the sixth chapter of St. Matthew. But was any one of these, or even Solomon himself, arrayed like Dendrobium Wardianum? The most gorgeous of its gorgeous tribe, it is perhaps the most gorgeous of flowers; and among the easiest grown species, it blossoms freely, suspended in the library from a block of wood.
I must watch long to see a blue or purple orchid in bloom, colors common enough among garden and other greenhouse flowers. True red and vermilion are extremely rare, yellow in its various shades being perhaps the most common color, green and white occupying an almost equal place. Brown-shaded or brown-spotted flowers are common, and there exist numerous pink-purples and crimsons. Magenta frequently creeps into the Cattleyas, staining the crest of the pearl or cream-colored lobe, or splashing the curled or fimbriated lip. But magenta lends itself better to orchids than to other flowers; and objectionable as it generally is, it may be pardoned in some of the Cattleyas. It is a tropical color and brings perfume. Apart from the strange odors, shapes, and colors of the flowers, the orchid still continues exceptional in the wonderful duration of its blooms both upon the plant and in the cut stage. Epiphytal or terrestrial, tropical or native, in all its aspects the orchid is strange.
How few, while admiring the gorgeous beauty of an epiphytal orchid, think of the price it has cost to transfer it from its tropical habitat! For very many of the numerous species have been obtained at the sacrifice of human lives—martyrs to hardship, exposure, and disease engendered while wresting a new species from its miasma-infested home. The accounts of many orchid collectors who have lived to relate their experiences read like the exploits of a Stanley or a tale of Verne.
If my orchids are chary of red, many foliage plants supply this color abundantly, and ferns the graceful leafage and lovely greens which orchids lack. I say nothing of the palm, the tree-fern, the Monstera, the Musa, and similar large plants that require special quarters where they may have ample space to do them justice. But color and form are supplied by many medium-sized foliage plants of comparatively easy culture; and in selecting these, like orchids, it is well to choose a few of the finest and most distinct, rather than crowd the stages with a mass of plants of only average merit. One can never cease to admire the brilliant mottling and veining of the Croton’s evergreen foliage, the grand purplish green leaves of Maranta Zebrina, the elegant markings of the Calladium, the velvety crimson-mottled leaves of the Gesneras, the polished bronze shields of Alocassia metallica, the bronze-green and satiny luster of the Camphylobtrys, the vivid exquisite red tones of the Dracæna’s younger leafage, and the Poinsettia’s fiery scarlet whorls. Perhaps no other red, even that of the pomegranate, is quite so intense as the flaming spathe and spadix of several of the great tropical aroids belonging to the species Anthurium, valuable for their fine foliage as well as for their startling flowers. An interesting foliage plant is the old Strelitzia reginæ, producing singular brilliant orange and purple flowers, one continually pushing up beneath the other from its magical wand. The Imatophyllum, or Clivia, is likewise a satisfactory foliage plant, apart from the showy florescence of its large umbel of twelve to fifteen coppery-red blossoms.
The variegated form of the pine-apple (Ananas bracteatus) goes farther than any other greenhouse plant in its combined appeal to the senses, its rich reddish foliage pleasing the eye, and its rich red fruit captivating the sense of sight, smell, and taste. I fancy the smaller fruit of this variety is of more pronounced flavor than that of the type; but this may be simply owing to its more inviting appearance. One needs no other odor in the greenhouse when the pine-apple is in fruit. It was a Huguenot priest who described the pine-apple, three centuries ago, as a gift of such excellence that only the hand of Venus should gather it. It might have fallen from the sky a larger and more delicious strawberry. No one who has tasted it only after it has been plucked green and subjected to a long voyage in the hold of a vessel, can conceive its ambrosial flavor when cut ripe from the stem. It is a fresh revelation to the taste; it almost renews one’s youth.
Some specimens of the Sarracenias or pitcher-plants are interesting, though when suspended from their baskets they lack their native grace. I always recall the Sarracenia as I first met it, its purple cups and rufous-green leaves fringing a deep black pool. Springing from the sphagnum, cotton-rose, and cranberry tangle of the swamp, it seemed to possess a conscious life of freshness and of color, callous to November frost and cold. The thick carpet of cranberry upheld the footstep on the quaking bog, and every tread spilled the water from the Sarracenia’s brimming cups and leaves. Aflame with scarlet berries, a growth of black-alder skirted the outer edges of the pool; on the rising ground beyond, the gray boles and gilded foliage of a beech grove were illumined by the sinking sun. It was a study for a Ruysdael or a Diaz, if a Diaz could reproduce the mellow grays and reds of the sphagnum and the Sarracenia. Fontainebleau or the thickets of Bas-Bréau hold no such pool; it is alone the product of a wild New World swamp.
Of flowers grown for the sake of fragrance alone, or beauty of blossom and fragrance combined, it is difficult to specify which are the most desirable—so many are so beautiful. Such stiff, soulless subjects as the camellia and calla are worthless, and should be thrown out of the greenhouse—there are too many good things to take their place. A flower should have a meaning, or a sentiment attached to it; and the camellia and calla have none; they are frigid even for the grave. Many of the glaring blues, purples, crimsons, and magentas of the Cinerarias, and some of the agonizing reds of the Chinese primrose are equally to be avoided as so much rubbish for which the greenhouse has no room. The common pink begonia, which every one grows because every one else grows it, should likewise be left out in favor of many other better varieties of its class. Of roses there can not well be too many; and of these a well-grown Maréchal Niel or a Gloire de Dijon can scarcely be excelled for luxuriance, fragrance, and beauty of bloom.