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But suppose Cattleyas are all hybrids, the result of promiscuous intercourse among genera during cycles of time suppose, that is, the genus itself sprang from parents widely diverse, crossing, returning, intercrossing from age to age? It is admitted that Cypripedium represents a primeval form perhaps the primeval form of orchid.
However disillusioned we may be about women, however we may regard the possession of even the most divergent types as an invariable and monotonous experience, every detail of which is known and can be described in advance, it still becomes a fresh and stimulating pleasure if the women concerned be or be thought to be so difficult as to oblige us to base our attack upon some unrehearsed incident in our relations with them, as was originally for Swann the arrangement of the cattleyas.
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.
She was wearing, under her cloak, a flowing gown of black velvet, caught up on one side so as to reveal a large triangular patch of her white silk skirt, with an 'insertion, also of white silk, in the cleft of her low-necked bodice, in which were fastened a few more cattleyas.
Orchids lend themselves to experiment with singular freedom, within certain limits, and their array of colours seems to invite our interference. Taking species and genera all round, yellow dominates, owing to its prevalence in the great family of Oncidium; purples and mauves stand next by reason of their supremacy among the Cattleyas.
He climbed after her into the carriage which she had kept waiting, and ordered his own to follow. She had in her hand a bunch of cattleyas, and Swann could see, beneath the film of lace that covered her head, more of the same flowers fastened to a swansdown plume.
It is fairly safe to credit that in some future time, not distant, Cattleyas may flourish in the jungles of India, Dendrobiums on the Amazons, Phaloenopsis in the coast lands of Central America. Those who wish well to their kind would like to hasten that day.
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.
The poor man who succeeds with them in his modest "bit of glass" has no cause to envy Dives his flaunting Cattleyas and "fox-brush" Aerides. I should like to publish it in capitals that nine in ten of those suburban householders who read this book may grow the loveliest of orchids if they can find courage to try.
When we see a pot of C. labiata, the true, autumn-flowering variety, more than two years old, we know that the very plant itself must have been established about 1818, or at least its immediate parent for no seedling has been raised to public knowledge. In avowing a certain indifference to Cattleyas, I referred to the bulk, of course.
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