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Not so common but larger and handsomer than the dendrobiums are the cymbidiums, of which there are sixteen different species, usually with long grassy leaves and many-flowered drooping racemes with large handsome flowers. A very sweet-scented species is the Cymbidium eburneum, which is common between elevations of 1,000 to 3,000 feet, and flowers during March and April.
Other Cymbidiums are here, but not the beautiful C. eburneum. Its large white flowers, erect on a short spike, not drooping like these, will be found in a cool house smelt with delight before they are found. Further on we have a bank of Dendrobiums, so densely clothed in bloom that the leaves are unnoticed.
The Burmese cases in hand just now are filled with Dendrobiums, crassinode and Wardianum, stowed in layers as close as possible, with D. Falconerii for packing material. A royal way of doing things indeed to substitute an orchid of value for shavings or moss, but mighty convenient and profitable.
A worthy similitude to the lily of the valley clings to a decaying limb, and a passing smudge of lustrous brown is but the reflection from a mass of the commonest of the Dendrobiums which encumbers a long-suffering host. Where forest trees and wattles guard the bank the water is of a different hue, as if the face of the river had absorbed less of the actualities of the sun.
The wild English strawberry is found on the ground, while above tropical orchids like the dendrobiums cover the trunks of the oaks. The bracken and the club-moss of our British moors grow associated with tree-ferns. And English grow alongside Himalayan mosses.
Some fine Orchideae were in flower in the, gardens, but few of them fruit; and those Dendrobiums which bear axillary viviparous buds never do.
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.
Thousands and millions of convolvoluses, paulinias, bignonias, dendrobiums, climbing from the fern to the tree trunks, from the trunks to the branches and summits of the trees, and thence again falling gracefully down, and catching and clinging to the mangroves and blocks of granite.
Packers strongly approve the reluctance of the public to buy, since it restricts importation. The foreman has been laid up again and again. But they find pleasing curiosities also, tropic beetles, and insects, and cocoons. Dendrobiums in especial are favoured by moths; D. Wardianum is loaded with their webs, empty as a rule.
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