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Updated: June 18, 2025
This species flowered at Kew so early as 1824, but the plant died. Messrs. Loddiges, of Hackney, re-introduced it thirty years later. D. Johannis, from Queensland, brown and yellow, streaked with orange, the flowers curiously twisted. D. superbiens, from Torres Straits, rosy purple, edged with white, lip crimson. Handsomest of all by far is D. phaloenopsis.
Sander received more than forty thousand plants of Masdevallia Tovarensis sent them direct to the auction-room and drove down the price in one month from a guinea a leaf to the fraction of a shilling. Other great sales might be recalled, as that of Phaloenopsis Sanderiana and Vanda Sanderiana, when a sum as yet unparalleled was taken in the room; Cypripedium Spicerianum, Cyp.
Many persons regard Phaloenopsis as the loveliest of all, and there is no question of their supreme beauty, though not everyone may rank them first. They come mostly from the Philippines, but Java, Borneo, Cochin China, Burmah, even Assam contribute some species.
Nevertheless, it is a maxim with growers that Phaloenopsis should never be transferred from a situation where they are doing well. Their hooks are sacred as that on which Horace suspended his lyre. Nor could a reasonable man think this fancy extravagant, seeing the evidence beyond dispute which warns us that their health is governed by circumstances more delicate than we can analyze at present.
For there are some genera and many species that refuse his attentions more or less stubbornly in fact, we do not yet know how to woo them. But the Phaloenopsis is not among them. It gives no trouble in the great majority of cases. For myself, I find it grow with the calm complacency of the cabbage. Yet we are all aware that our success is accidental, in a measure.
Of D. phaloenopsis Schroederi I have spoken elsewhere. There is D. Goldiei; a variety of D. superbiens but much larger. There is D. Albertesii, snow-white; D. Broomfieldianum, curiously like Loelia anceps alba in its flower which is to say that it must be the loveliest of all Dendrobes. But this species has a further charm, almost incredible.
This is shown emphatically by those cases which we do not clearly understand; I take for example the strangest, as is fitting. Some irreverent zealots have hailed the Phaloenopsis as Queen of Flowers, dethroning our venerable rose. I have not to consider the question of allegiance, but decidedly this is, upon the whole, the most interesting of all orchids in the cultivator's point of view.
Partington, of Cheshunt, who was the most renowned cultivator of the genus in his time, used to lay down salt upon the paths and beneath the stages of his Phaloenopsis house. Lady Howard de Walden stands first, perhaps, at the present day, and her gardener follows the same system. These plants, indeed, are affected, for good or ill, by influences too subtle for our perception as yet.
The tube-like flowers are purple, contrasting exquisitely with a snow-white lip, striped with lilac in the throat. Phaloenopsis, of course, are hot. This is one of our oldest genera which still rank in the first class. It was drawn and described so early as 1750, and a plant reached Messrs. Rollisson in 1838; they sold it to the Duke of Devonshire for a hundred guineas.
Reichenbach displayed his scientific instinct by suggesting that two species submitted to him might probably be the issue of parents named; since that date Seden has produced both of them from the crosses which Reichenbach indicated. We have three natural hybrids among Phaloenopsis. Ph. intermedia made its appearance in a lot of Ph. Aphrodite, imported 1852.
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