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Updated: June 9, 2025
These secured, you may turn up the books, consult the authorities, and gradually accumulate the knowledge which will enable you to satisfy the preferences of each class. So, in good time, you may enjoy such a thrill of pleasure as I felt the other day when a great pundit was good enough to pay me a call. He entered my tiny Odontoglossum house, looked round, looked round again, and turned to me.
After a single lesson, in the genus Cypripedium alone, a young lady of my household amused herself by concerting the most incredible alliances Dendrobium with Odontoglossum, Epidendrum with Oncidium, Oncidium with Odontoglossum, and so forth. It is unnecessary to tell the experienced that in every case the seed vessel swelled; that matter will be referred to presently.
The glossy bulbs are clean as new pins, with the small "eye" just bursting among their roots; but nobody seems to want Odontoglossum Alexandræ in particular. One neat little bunch is sold for 11s., which will surely bear a wreath of white flowers, splashed with red brown, in the spring perhaps two. And then bidding ceases.
Weir and Fortune, I believe, were their earliest employés. Another was Theodor Hartweg, who discovered Odontoglossum crispum Alexandræ in 1842; but he sent home only dried specimens. From these Lindley described and classed the plant, aided by the sketch of a Spanish or Peruvian artist, Tagala. A very curious mistake Lindley fell into on either point.
For reasons beyond our comprehension as yet, the Odontoglossum stands in different case. No one in England has raised a plant from seed that we may venture to say definitely. Mr. Cookson and Mr. Veitch, perhaps others also, have obtained living germs, but they died incontinently. Frenchmen, aided by the climate, have been rather more successful.
It cannot be due to temperature simply, for, upon the one hand, we receive Sophronitis, a very cool genus, from Brazil, and several of the coolest Cattleyas; upon the other, Odontoglossum Roezlii, a very hot species, and O. vexillarium, most decidedly warm, flourish up to the boundary.
'It is found upon the lower Himalayan slopes, and bears a close resemblance to the white odontoglossum of commerce, except that the flower is much smaller. Its perfume attracts insects and sometimes small animals and reptiles, although inhalation seems to induce instant death.
They have been arriving in scores of thousands, year by year, for half a century almost, and scarcely anyone recollects observing a seed-capsule. This shows how rarely they fertilize in their native home. When that event happens, the Odontoglossum is yet more prolific than most, and the germs, of course, are not so delicate under their natural conditions.
Interesting questions arise in surveying fine specimens side by side, in flower, all attributed to a cross between Odontoglossum Lindleyanum and Odontoglossum crispum Alexandræ, and all quite different. But we must get on to the ninth house, from which the tenth branches.
"In the name of all this company let me congratulate you on having become the owner of the matchless 'Odontoglossum Pavo' for what, under all the circumstances, I consider the quite moderate price of £2,300." Really that young man took it very well. He shivered slightly and turned a little pale, that is all. Woodden rocked to and fro like a tree about to fall.
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