ORCHIS AND ORCHIDS. 



Levant are dozens more, with the moony citron of 0. fallens ; while 

 Madeira has almost grown tired of giving us her gorgeous 0. foliosa, 

 which is like a darker, gigantic 0. maculaia, and adapted for the same 

 sort of damp place in a warm and sheltered corner. But pompously- 

 named 0. spectabilis from America — and the only species there found — 

 is sadly unworthy of its name, having only a few large and scattered 

 hoody flowers of pink and white on the stumpy stems that nestle into 

 foliage excessively ample. Of Ophrys, despite their uncanny beauty 

 of plagiarism from bee and bug and bird, no such smooth things can 

 be said as of Orchis; they are matter for the specialist, though in nature 

 no Orchis looks more hearty or happy. In cultivation, though all 

 are worthy (and high above the rest, strange rare 0. Speculum, with 

 its broad azure patch of looking-glass on the velvet lip, which here 

 and there may very rarely be strayed across in the coasts of the Riviera), 

 all are of brief portion here, and the happiest suggestion will probably 

 be a rather moist and almost wholly sandy mixture, with a scant 

 allowance of leaf-mould and a much more generous one of lime-rubble 

 (though this, considering the provenance of many, can hardly be 

 always essential). And our despair of Ophrys rests hardly so much 

 perhaps on the plants themselves as on the impossibility of getting 

 fresh unshrivelled tubers that have neither been hacked, parched, nor 

 rotted. The delicate lovely little marsh-Orchids of North America 

 had better be left alone in then marshes by all except the most patient, 

 passionate, and prodigal of gardeners ; while marsh-plants as a rule 

 adapt themselves almost with excessive greed to artificial marsh- 

 conditions, the bog-Orchids make a startling and odious exception to 

 the custom — a race of most dainty small fairies, whose tubers sit in 

 the Sphagnum wads, and require constant and especial treatment to 

 keep their temper tame, and then surroundings just exactly and pre- 

 cisely as they please, the slightest dereliction in the matter being fol- 

 lowed by death. Who, in England, has had prolonged success with 

 any of these little lovelinesses, exquisite as the ancient names they 

 bear, of the nymphs whose place they take by fountain-side or pool — 

 Arethusa, Calypso, or Limodoron, Calopogon, or Pogonia ? Less often 

 tried, however, and perhaps more open to hope, is the gorgeous race 

 of American swamp-Habenarias, tropical-looking splendours, with the 

 ample lower lip often slashed and fringed into a fur as fine as that on 

 the labellum of Dendrobium fimbriatum. Of such (all most especially 

 to be ensued, and to be acquired by fresh moss-wrapped tubers 

 sent quickly over from America) are : H. fragrans, small and white, 

 but deliciously sweet ; H. ciliaris, very magnificent, with ample 

 fringy flowers of orange ; H. blephariglottis, close akin, but white ; 



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