26 



ported plants. Unfortunately, this has led to an enormous denudation 

 of the Colombian forests, and the destruction still goes on, and must 

 ultimately lead to a scarcity, for orchid collectors frequently have 

 to cut down the trees to obtain the plants growing on them. A 

 collector who obtains, say, 10,000 Odontoglossum, will perhaps destroy 

 from 3000 to 4000 trees to secure them. Whether the demand is 

 slackening somewhat is not stated by those who know best, but it is 

 apparently the case that the supply of O. crispum is still equal to all 

 the demands. Occasionally, a collector will come upon a tree that for 

 no obvious reason has an enormous number of plants upon it. An 

 orchid collector told me the other day that once he found a mango 

 tree near Manaos on the Amazon completely covered with a plant of 

 the beautiful Oncidium lanceanum. After cutting it up it occupied 

 three large packing cases, and the pieces eventually arrived in 

 London, having come to no harm. 



Cypripedium is to be found over a large portion of the earth — 

 India, Malacca, Siam, New Guinea, Borneo, Philippines, Java and 

 Sumatra, of the Old World ; Peru, Bolivia, Central America, Guiana, 

 Brazil, and North America, of the New World. The genus Cypri- 

 pedium is here used collectively for all the species, but Cypripediion 

 has now been divided into Cypi'ipedalum and Paphiopedahtm, the 

 former embracing all the hardy species, and the latter all the Old 

 World true ladies' slippers. Se/enipedzum, which contains the South 

 American species with strap-like foliage, is now divided into Seleni- 

 pedalum and Phrag??iypedaiio/i, the latter embracing most of the South 

 American slippers of cultivation, including the remarkable tailed 

 species, which have the petals greatly attenuated. The South Ameri- 

 can species produce a flower spike carrying one or two flowers at a 

 time, and as the flowers die the scape grows and produces another 

 flower, until perhaps a dozen flowers have been produced. 



The Growth of an Orchid. 



With the hardy terrestrial orchids the growth is very similar to an 

 ordinary low-growing herb, and they are generally pseudo-bulbless, 

 having subterranean tubers only. Some exotic species have the 

 appearance of reeds, such as Sobralia, but the hardened central 

 portion of the plant does not act as a reservoir to supply future growths, 

 such as is the case with Cattleya, Odontoglosswn, Catasetum, and 

 the like. Many of the exotic terrestrial orchids have large pseudo- 

 bulbs, and some tend to become epiphytal in their habits. The genus 

 Thunia is equally epiphytal and terrestrial, but doubtless tends to 

 become epiphytal. The genus Calanthe, although wholly terrestrial, 

 has large pseudo-bulbs, some of the species being evergreen and others 

 deciduous : the deciduous species having large bulbs, and the 

 evergreen species very small bulbs. The genus Pleione also has pseudo- 

 bulbs, but they are of annual duration only ; as the new growth 

 appears and the new bulb matures the old one dies 



