132 THE WOODLANDS ORCHIDS 



self, and a few survived. Sir Trevor Lawrence bought two, 

 I believe, but they died before flowering. So did all the 

 rest. 



But if the Cymbidiums of our experience make no display 

 of brilliant colour, assuredly they have other virtues. When 

 eburneum thrusts up its rigid spikes, in winter or earliest 

 spring, crowned with great ivory blooms, the air is loaded 

 with their perfume. I have seen a plant of Lowianum with 

 more than twenty garlands arching out from its thicket of 

 leaves, each bearing fifteen to twenty-five three-inch flowers, 

 yellow or greenish, with a heavy bar of copper-red across the 

 lip. And they grow fast. It is said that at Alnwick the 

 Duke of Northumberland has specimens of unknown age 

 filling boxes four feet square ; each must be a garden in 

 itself when the flowers open. And they last three months 

 when circumstances are favourable. Sometimes also — but 

 too rarely — the greenish yellow of Lowianum is changed to 

 bright soft green. Nobody then could say that the colouring 

 is not attractive. 



We have here most of the recognised species — Cym- 

 bidiums are not much given to ' sporting ' : Devonianum, 

 buff, freckled with dull crimson — lip purplish, with a dark 

 spot on either side ; Sinensis, small, brown and yellow, 

 scented ; Hookeri, greenish, dotted and blotched with purple ; 

 Traceyanum, greenish, striped with red-brown, lip white, 

 similarly dotted, and the famous Baron Schroder variety 

 thereof, which arrived in the very first consignment, but 

 never since ; pendulum, dusky olive, lip whitish, reddish at 

 the sides and tip ; and so on. 



The only hybrids of Cymbidium known to me are 

 eburneo- Lowianum and its converse, Lowiano- eburneum. 

 The former is creamy yellow, with the V-shaped blotch 

 of its father on the lip ; the latter pure white, with the 

 same blotch more sharply defined — which is to say, that 



