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Bamboos shoot up through the undergrowth to a hundred feet or more in height. The fallen trees are richly clothed with ferns typical of the hottest and dampest climates. And dendrobiums and other orchids fasten on the branches. At Kurseong there is another striking change, for the vegetation now becomes more characteristic of the temperate zone.
Veitch, which has supplied me with a mass of details, I find ten hybrid Calanthes; thirteen hybrid Cattleyas, and fifteen Loelias, besides sixteen "natural hybrids" species thus classed upon internal evidence and the wondrous Sophro-Cattleya, bi-generic; fourteen Dendrobiums and one natural; eighty-seven Cypripediums but as for the number in existence, it is so great, and it increases so fast, that Messrs.
Some bear their flowers in erect spikes, or loose heads; others have drooping racemes a yard in length, as some of the dendrobiums. More have a slender flower-stalk making a graceful curve, with the flowers placed on the uppermost side, as Pholænopsis amablis, which bears a profusion of white blossoms closely resembling large moths with expanded wings.
Epid. prismatocarpum, also, is a lovely thing, with narrow dagger-like sepals and petals, creamy-yellow, spotted black, lip mauve or violet, edged with pale yellow. Of the many hot Dendrobiums, Australia supplies a good proportion. There is D. bigibbum, of course, too well known for description; it dwells on the small islands in Torres Straits.
On my telling them that it was very mean to demand anything from a shipwrecked man, they gave me thirty per cent. deduction on my passage" 201 dollars instead of 280 dollars. However, he reached New Guinea once more and tried fresh ground, having exhausted the former field. Again he found the Dendrobiums, of better quality and in greater number than before.
Importers are too well aware that Schomburgkia tibicinis also is inhabited by an ant of singular ferocity, for it survives the voyage, and rushes forth to battle when the case is opened. We may suppose that it performs a like service. Dendrobiums are "warm" mostly; of the hot species, which are many, and the cool, which are few, I have not to speak here.
Though they are by no means to be seen in perfection, there are here many things that I love, bananas, poinsettias, papayas, tree-ferns, dendrobiums, dracenas, the scarlet passion-flower, the spurious banyan, date, sago, and traveler's palms, and numberless other trees and shrubs, children of the burning sun of the tropics, carefully watered and tended, but exotics after all.
One of the most charming of the Sikkim dendrobiums has the smell of violets, and the sepals and petals are white-tipped with violet, the stem being sometimes 2 1/2 feet long. Another noteworthy dendrobium is the D. pierardi, whose prevailing colour is a beautiful rose or pale purple. After the dendrobiums the coelogyne are the most worth noting.
Of the 450 species of orchids found in the Sikkim Forest, many are very rare. But fortunately the rarest are not the most beautiful in colour and form. Some very beautiful orchids are also very common. The most common are the dendrobiums, of which there are about forty species. The finest and best known is the Dendrobium nobile.
It flowered within three years of fertilizing. As a genus, perhaps, Dendrobiums are readiest to show. Plants have actually been "pricked out" within two months of sowing, and they have bloomed within the fourth year. Phajus and Calanthe rank next for rapid development. Masdevallia, Chysis, and Cypripedium require four to five years, Lycaste seven to eight, Loelia and Cattleya ten to twelve.
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