ORCHIDS FOR BEGINNERS 



ORCHIDS are no longer charmed flowers their classic beauty 

 shines in the plant-house of the amateur gardener ; but once, 

 not many years ago, this quixotic plant was reserved only 

 for those whose flower-loving propensities were not ham- 

 pered by financial considerations. Collectors, brave men, 

 have scoured the world in search of the air Orchids, the 

 Epiphytes, whose lives are spent amid the tree branches of 

 the jungle, and sent them home in cartloads from all quarters 

 of the globe from the mountains of Mexico, from the swamps 

 of the Tropics and from the pleasant mountain heights ; the 

 family, through their cosmopolitan distribution, requiring, 

 when brought under home influence, treatment of a varying 

 kind. Of course, the tyro in things botanical or horticultural 

 knows that in these little isles of ours many charming Orchids 

 are happy in chalky downs or cliffs, or in the lush meadow, 

 and of these the Bee Orchis and Spotted Orchis occur to mind 

 as flowers worthy of a special place in the rock-garden. An 

 Orchid flower is an interesting study, and its fertilisation one 

 of the most fascinating experiments to the botanist, or he who 

 strives to raise new forms by joining together two species to 

 produce a hybrid. Though the Orchids apparently differ so 

 greatly from each other, they are botanically of the same 

 family, and the flowers assume many strange, grotesque, and 

 beautiful forms some almost deceiving the careless observer 

 by their resemblance to some insect, others rejecting the 

 common mode of sustenance by seeking the tree branches, to 

 which they cling by their thick white roots, deriving from the 

 moist atmosphere their life's support. Orchids are not para- 

 sites. A parasite is a plant that lives upon its host, but to the 

 Epiphyte the tree is simply a support. A wonderful organ of 

 the flower is the lip, or " labellum," to use botanical language, 

 and this assumes many strange shapes, sometimes reminding 

 one of a pouch, as in the Cypripedium or Lady Slipper, and 

 sometimes it is so lightly attached to the main part of the flower 

 that the least breath of wind causes movement, whilst in the 

 waxy Angraecums the lip is lengthened into a spur filled with 



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