350 ANNUAL REPOBT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



time was unknown not only to the public, but even to the most skill- 

 ful horticulturists.^ There is every reason to believe, however, that 

 it was in the Veitch houses at Chelsea that the methods were per- 

 fected which enabled Dominy, who was employed as a gardener in 

 that great establishment, to dare undertake a work of long duration 

 which was to produce wonderful results. I refer to orchid hybridiza- 

 tion. The work of hybridization alwaj^s occupies the attention of 

 horticulturists whenever they introduce a new plant. It has been 

 carried on with such great success for the begonias, pelargoniums, 

 and chrysanthemums. If up to the middle of the nineteenth century 

 they had not undertaken the task with orchids it was only because 

 they were rendered powerless by their inability to secure germina- 

 tion; and horticultural activity, rendered fruitless, had to exercise 

 itself in some other direction to satisfy the admirers of these beauti- 

 ful plants. It was thus that the importations took the prodigious 

 flight described above, and that the number of cultivated species came 

 to be so enormous — from 2,000 to 6,000 in the w^hole family. No- 

 where else in the vegetable kingdom is there another province where 

 the exertion has been so prodigious from this point of view. 



After 1850 we enter upon a new era, although at first the change 

 was scarcely appreciable. Discoveries were kept concealed and their 

 results made their appearance very slowly, so that it was not compre- 

 hended at first that horticultural evolution was engaged in new 

 directions. Dominy, after he had been initiated by Dr. Harris into 

 the very peculiar specializations presented by the sexual mechanism 

 of the orchid flower, undertook the first cross-fertilizations. More- 

 over, he showed his gratitude much later, in 1869, when the first 

 Cypripedium hybrid appeared, for he gave it the name of Cypri- 

 yedmm, Harrisianimn. This plant was a very important Iwbrid, but 

 obtained at a comparatively late date. Long before, in October, 

 1856, Calanthey^Doininyi had made its appearance. It was the 

 result of crossing Calanthe Masuca with Calanthe furcata. The 

 seeds were sown in 1853 and three years were sufficient for the ap- 

 pearance of a new plant, for it was indeed a new creation. 



After these widely separated periods, 1856, the date of appearance 

 of the first orchid hybrid, and 1869, the date of appearance of the 

 first hybrid Cypripedium, an immense task was undertaken by hor- 

 ticulturists, and the nimiber of their creations has been multiplying 

 in a disquieting fashion. At the present time 600 hybrids have been 

 obtained in the genus Cypripedium alone by crossing them with some 

 40 species of the Paphiopedilum found exclusively in tropical 

 regions of the Old World. Moreover it may be stated that the 



1 "A living plant is needed to render sanitary ( ?) the substratum in which germination 

 is to take place." Bois. DIctionnaIre d'Horticulture. 



