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MM. Bleu and Moreau have both flowered seedling Odontoglots. M. Jacob, who takes charge of M. Edmund de Rothschild's orchids at Armainvilliers, has a considerable number of young plants. The reluctance of Odontoglots to propagate is regarded as strange; it supplies a constant theme for discussion among orchidologists.
Savants alone are able to estimate the awful nature of the crisis when a comrade looses his grip of that treasure. For them it is needless to add that everything else went to the bottom. One is tempted to linger among the Odontoglots, though time is pressing. In no class of orchids are natural hybrids so mysterious and frequent.
This house is devoted to the hybridizing of Cypripediums; I choose that genus for our demonstration, because, as has been said, it is so very easy and so certain that an intelligent girl mastered all its eccentricities of structure after a single lesson, which made her equally proficient in those of Dendrobes, Oncidiums, Odontoglots, Epidendrums, and I know not how many more.
The assertion is not quite exact; but when we consider the habits of the genus, it ceases to be extraordinary that Cypripeds rarely cross in their wild state. Different species of Cattleya, Odontoglots, and the rest live together on the same tree, side by side. But those others dwell apart in the great majority of cases, each species by itself, at a vast distance perhaps from its kindred.
O'Brienianum from Epi. evectum × Epi. radicans; the former purple, the latter scarlet, produce ×a bright crimson progeny. Miltonias show two natural hybrids, and one artificial Mil. Bleuiana from Mil. vexillaria × Mil. Roezlii; both of these are commonly classed as Odontoglots, and I refer to them elsewhere under that title. M. Bleu and Messrs.
People hear of great sums paid for orchids, and they fancy that such represent only the extreme limits of an average. In fact, they have no relation whatsoever to the ordinary price. One of our largest general growers, who has but lately begun cultivating those plants, tells me that half-a-crown is the utmost he has paid for Cattleyas and Dendrobes, one shilling for Odontoglots and Oncidiums.
Want of it stands at the bottom of all his disappointments, perhaps. The very great majority of orchids, such as I refer to, have their home in the tropics; even the "cool" Odontoglots and Masdevallias owe that quality to their mountaineering habit, not to latitude. They live so near the equator that sunshine descends almost perpendicularly and the sun shines for more than half the year.
He will try his luck once more perhaps this season; and then he will pot the bulbs unsold to offer them as "established" next year. Oncidium luridum follows the Odontoglots, a broad-leaved, handsome orchid, which the untrained eye might think to have no pseudo-bulb at all. This species always commands a sale, if cheap, and ten shillings is a reasonable figure for a piece of common size.
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