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Now nothing was assuredly less easy in that jumble of knots, among which twisted the liana in the middle of bromelias, "karatas," armed with their sharp prickles, orchids with rosy flowers and violet lips the size of gloves, and oncidiums more tangled than a skein of worsted between a kitten's paws.
But there are Cymbidiums arching long sprays of green and chocolate; thickets of Dendrobe set with flowers beyond counting ivory and rose and purple and orange; scarlet Anthuriums: huge clumps of Phajus and evergreen Calanthe, with a score of spikes rising from their broad leaves; Cypripediums of quaint form and striking half-tones of colour; Oncidiums which droop their slender garlands a yard long, golden yellow and spotted, purple and white a hundred tints.
It is not found in the enormous spaces between, nor are any Oncidiums which might be accepted as its immediate parents. Can we suppose that the winds or the birds carried it over mountain ranges and broad rivers more than two thousand miles, in four several directions, to establish it upon a narrow tract?
Forstermann only secured three, of which two died on the journey. Baron Schroeder bought the third, but it has perished. No more can be found as yet. Of Oncidiums there are many that demand stove treatment. The story of Onc. splendidum is curious. It first turned up in France some thirty years ago. A ship's captain sailing from St.
Oncidiums also are a product of the New World exclusively; in fact, of the four classes most useful to amateurs, three belong wholly to America, and the fourth in great part. I resist the temptation to include Masdevallia, because that genus is not so perfectly easy as the rest; but if it be added, nine-tenths, assuredly, of the plants in our cool house come from the West.
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.
We measured some of the flower-sprays, the biggest being nine feet long. As they were brown and yellow Oncidiums, they were more curious than beautiful. The appalling desolation of St. Pierre, in the French island of Martinique, cannot be imagined without having been seen. Of a very handsome city of 40,000 inhabitants there is absolutely nothing left except one gable of the cathedral.
The native orchids of Jamaica are mostly oncidiums, with insignificant little brown and yellow flowers, and have no commercial value whatever. The Guardsman, however, was obsessed with the idea that he would discover some peerless bloom for which he would be paid hundreds of pounds by a London dealer.
This house is devoted to the hybridizing of Cypripediums; I choose that genus for our demonstration, because, as has been said, it is so very easy and so certain that an intelligent girl mastered all its eccentricities of structure after a single lesson, which made her equally proficient in those of Dendrobes, Oncidiums, Odontoglots, Epidendrums, and I know not how many more.
People hear of great sums paid for orchids, and they fancy that such represent only the extreme limits of an average. In fact, they have no relation whatsoever to the ordinary price. One of our largest general growers, who has but lately begun cultivating those plants, tells me that half-a-crown is the utmost he has paid for Cattleyas and Dendrobes, one shilling for Odontoglots and Oncidiums.
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