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I have told the story of Phaloenopsis Sanderiana. It was a Zulu who put the discoverer of the new yellow Calla on the track. The blue Utricularia had been heard of and discredited long before it was found Utricularias are not orchids indeed, but only botanists regard the distinction.
Beneath it stands the very rare scarlet Utricularia, growing in the axils of its native Vriesia, as in a cup always full; but as yet the flower has been seen in Europe only by the eyes of faith. It may be news to some that Utricularias do not belong to the orchid family have, in fact, not the slightest kinship, though associated with it by growers to the degree that Mr.
About seven miles from our camp, we saw a low blue range to the westward; and, soon after, passed a sandy Pandanus creek, with scrubby broken banks: this was joined by a second, and both together entered a broad tea-tree creek, coming from the south-west, in which we found a fine pool of water covered with white and yellow Villarsias and yellow Utricularias.
At the end of the stage, we skirted some dense scrub, and encamped at one of the lagoons parallel to a dry creek, which must belong to the Nassau, as its latitude was 15 degrees 55 minutes 8 seconds. The lagoon was covered with small white Nymphaeas, Damasoniums, and yellow Utricularias; and on its banks were heaps of mussel-shells.
The river has a broad bed, at times dividing into several channels, lined with stately Melaleucas and flooded-gum, and again uniting into one deep channel, with long reaches of water surrounded by Polygonums, and overgrown with blue Nymphaeas, Damasoniums, and Utricularias, and inhabited by large flights of ducks. Rock occasionally enters into the bed of the river.
In the face of such strange facts, is it very absurd to guess that these Utricularias, so like each other in their singular and highly specialised flowers, so unlike each other in the habit of the rest of the plant, have started from some one original type perhaps long since extinct; and that, carried by birds into quite new situations, they have adapted themselves, by natural selection, to new circumstances, changing the parts which required change the leaves and stalks; but keeping comparatively unchanged those which needed no change the flowers?