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Updated: June 9, 2025
"There is nothing in the world the matter with me," she said, almost in her old bright manner "now that you are back " "I do not approve of orchids," jerked Cairn doggedly. "They are parodies of what a flower should be. Place an Odontoglossum beside a rose, and what a distorted unholy thing it looks!" "Unholy?" laughed Myra. "Unholy, yes! they are products of feverish swamps and deathly jungles.
Experience hitherto suggests that we cannot raise Odontoglossum seedlings in this climate; very, very few have ever been obtained. Attempts in France have been rather more successful. Baron Adolf de Rothschild has four different hybrids of Odontoglossum in bud at this present moment in his garden at Armainvilliers, near Paris. M. Moreau has a variety of seedlings.
Now, as it is exactly half-past one, we will proceed to business. Smith, hand the 'Odontoglossum Pavo' round, that everyone may inspect its beauties, and be careful you don't let it fall. Gentlemen, I must ask you not to touch it or to defile its purity with tobacco smoke. Eight perfect flowers in bloom, gentlemen, and four no, five more to open.
But imagination cannot bear mortal man thus far. "Upon the banks of Paradise" those "twa clerks" may have seen the like; yet, had they done so their hats would have been adorned not with "the birk," but with plumes of Odontoglossum citrosmum. I have but another word to say.
My whole batch was devoured one year by "devils" the larvæ of Dytiscus marginalis, the Plunger beetle. I have benefited, or at least have puzzled my neighbours also by introducing to them another sort of frog. Three years ago I bought twenty-five Hyloe, the pretty green tree species, to dwell in my Odontoglossum house and exterminate the insects.
Among them were idealizations of flowers, beautiful and marvellous as fairyland, but compared with the glory divine that dwells in a garland of Odontoglossum Alexandræ, artificial, earthy. But on the table before me now stands a wreath of Oncidium crispum which I cannot pass by.
Of Calanthe, sixteen hybrids from nineteen capsules; of Dendrobium, thirty-six hybrids from forty-one capsules; of Masdevallia, four hybrids from seventeen capsules; of Odontoglossum, none from nine capsules; of Phajus, two from two capsules; of Vanda, none from one capsule; of bi-generic, one from nine capsules.
So pleasant chat goes on, until, at the stroke of half-past twelve, the auctioneer mounts his rostrum. First to come before him are a hundred lots of Odontoglossum crispum Alexandræ, described as of "the very best type, and in splendid condition." For the latter point everyone present is able to judge, and for the former all are willing to accept the statements of vendors.
"I think he has only gone with Mamma into the conservatory," she said "no more diamonds, partner? to advise her about the orchids." Now the conservatory was what Miss Mapp considered a potting-shed with a glass roof, and the orchids were one anæmic odontoglossum, and there would scarcely be room besides that for Mrs. Poppit and Mr. Wyse.
I have got some money that she left me, £6,000 or £7,000, and I'll sell that 'Odontoglossum Pavo' for what it will fetch to Sir Joshua Tredgold he was the man with the long beard who you tell me ran up Woodden to over £2,000 or failing him to someone else. I'll write about it to-night.
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