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Updated: June 8, 2025
Briefly, I myself once bought a case two feet long, a foot wide, half-full of Odontoglossums for 8s. 6d. They were small bits, but perfect in condition. Of the fifty-three pots they made, not one, I think, has been lost. I sold the less valuable some years ago, when established and tested, at a fabulous profit.
Things beautiful and rare and costly are measured here by the yard so many feet of this piled up on the stage, so many of the other, from all quarters of the world, waiting the leisure of these busy agriculturists. Nor can we spare them more than a glance. The next house is filled with Odontoglossums, planted out like "bedding stuff" in a nursery, awaiting their turn to be potted.
So it is with Odontoglossums, as has been said, but in the natural state they cross so freely that a large proportion of the species may probably be hybrids. I allude to this hereafter. I have left Cypripediums to the last, in these hasty notes, because that supremely interesting genus demands more than a record of dry facts.
But in place of the rather weakly colouring habitual it has a grand decision of character, though the tones are like pale yellow and greenish; its raised spots, red and deep green, are distinct as points of velvet upon muslin. In the eighth house we return to Odontoglossums and cool genera.
Odontoglossums stand first, of course I know not where to begin the list of their supreme merits. It will seem perhaps a striking advantage to many that they burst into flower at any time, as they chance to ripen. I think that the very perfection of culture is discounted somewhat in this instance.
Warm orchids come from a sub-tropic region, or from the mountains of a hotter climate, where their kinsfolk dwelling in the plains defy the thermometer; just as in sub-tropic lands warm species occupy the lowlands, while the heights furnish Odontoglossums and such lovers of a chilly atmosphere.
Still, the end will come. The English demand has stripped whole provinces, and now all the civilized world is entering into competition. We are sadly assured that Odontoglossums carried off will not be replaced for centuries. Most other genera of orchid propagate so freely that wholesale depredations are made good in very few years.
The sixth house is cool again Odontoglossums and such; the seventh is given to Dendrobes. But facing us as we enter stands a Lycaste Skinneri, which illustrates in a manner almost startling the infinite variety of the orchid. I positively dislike this species, obtrusive, pretentious, vague in colour, and stiff in form.
Lycastes are found in the woods, of Guatemala especially, and I have heard no such adventures in the gathering of them as attend Odontoglossums. Easily obtained, easily transported, and remarkably easy to grow, of course they are cheap. A man must really "give his mind to it" to kill a Lycaste. This counts for much, no doubt, in the popularity of the genus, but it has plenty of other virtues.
But I think that if we look more closely it appears consistent with other facts known. For among importations of every genus but this and Cypripedium a plant bearing its seed-capsules is frequently discovered; but I cannot hear of such an incident in the case of Odontoglossums.
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