In the eighth house we return to Odontoglossums and
cool genera. Here are a number of Hybrids of
the “natural class,” upon which I should
have a good deal to say if inexorable fate permitted;
“natural hybrids” are plants which seem
species, but, upon thoughtful examination and study,
are suspected to be the offspring of kindred and neighbours.
Interesting questions arise in surveying fine specimens
side by side, in flower, all attributed to a cross
between Odontoglossum Lindleyanum and Odontoglossum
crispum Alexandrae, and all quite different.
But we must get on to the ninth house, from which
the tenth branches.
Here is the stove, and twilight reigns over that portion
where a variety of super-tropic genera are “plumping
up,” making roots, and generally reconciling
themselves to a new start in life. Such dainty,
delicate souls may well object to the apprenticeship.
It must seem very degrading to find themselves laid
out upon a bed of cinders and moss, hung up by the
heels above it, and even planted therein; but if they
have as much good sense as some believe, they may
be aware that it is all for their good. At the
end, in full sunshine, stands a little copse of Vanda
teres, set as closely as their stiff branches will
allow. Still we must get on. There are bits
of wood hanging here so rotten that they scarcely
hold together; faintest dots of green upon them assure
the experienced that presently they will be draped
with pendant leaves, and presently again, we hope,
with blue and white and scarlet flowers of Utricularia.
From the stove opens a very long, narrow house, where
cool genera are “plumping,” laid out on
moss and potsherds; many of them have burst into strong
growth. Pleiones are flowering freely as they
lie. This farmer’s crops come to harvest
faster than he can attend to them. 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. They make a carpet so
close, so green, that flowers are not required to
charm the eye as it surveys the long perspective.
The rest are occupied just now with cargoes of imported
plants.
My pages are filled—to what poor purpose,
seeing how they might have been used for such a theme,
no one could be so conscious as I.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: I was too sanguine. Vanda teres
refused to thrive.]
