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"Yes, my friend said it is the biggest ever found. It measures twenty-four inches across the wings, petals I think he called them, and about a foot across the back part." "Twenty-four inches across the petals and a foot across the dorsal sepal!" said the young man in a kind of gasp, "and a Cypripedium! Sir, surely you are joking?" "Sir," I answered indignantly, "I am doing nothing of the sort.
If all the parts of a flower sepal, petal, stamen, pistil, with their countless deviations of contour and color are but modifications of the leaf, such modification implies a marvellous differentiation and development.
Those who know the tribe of Brassias will understand why I make no effort to describe it. This wonderful thing is yet more "all over the shop" than its kindred. Its dorsal sepal measures three inches in length, its "tail," five inches, with an enormous lip between. They term it the Squid Flower, or Octopus, in Mexico; and a good name too.
It is this: that nature iterates her means perpetually on successive planes. In the old aphorism, nature is always self-similar. In the plant, the eye or germinative point opens to a leaf, then to another leaf, with a power of transforming the leaf into radicle, stamen, pistil, petal, bract, sepal, or seed.
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