7 8 



Garden and Forest 



[Number 313. 



Cosmos has lately become a most popular annual, and of 

 recent years it has also become a favorite flower with the 

 florist. It certainly is a most beautiful plant, with the very 

 finely cut foliage, over which airily poise the handsome single 

 flowers. The white variety is the most effective, the so-called 

 pink being inclined to a dull purple. Henderson offers a 

 strain, the flowers of which are twice the size of the ordinary 

 variety, but the greatest improvement in the Cosmos would 

 be a reduction in the height of the plants, which often reach 

 six or seven feet. Plants of, say, three feet, of the same char- 

 acter would be grand additions to our autumn gardens and 

 conservatories, and could be easily protected from the frosts 

 which are usually due with their flowers. Cosmos seems to 

 be a plant of a special season— October— and it apparently is of 

 little importance to sow_the seed earlier than with the main 

 crop of annuals. _, .. _ , 



Elizabeth, N. J. 7- N - Gerard. 



Border Flowers in February. 



SUNDAY, February nth, was a day of bright sunshine, with 

 a genial temperature, and the little colony of winter flow- 

 ers under my windows spread their petals and fairly smiled 

 with their reawakening. Stray flowers have been gradually 

 unfolding for several weeks as the rigor of the days relented, 

 but it was not until then that the more close plantings were effec- 

 tive. Rarely beautiful in this winter weather were the 

 bright rosy flowers of Crocus Imperati, with the strong 

 purple and clear blue of Iris Persica and I. Histrio, all fully 

 expanded, and with every color made more vivid by the 

 pure white of the Snowdrops (Elvves and its varieties), 

 which were blooming all about them. Iris Histrio is the 

 earliest of the Reticulata Irises, and has a fair claim to the dis- 

 tinction of being the handsomest of the section. It is nearly 

 blue, and the falls are lined and spotted with exquisite mark- 

 ings. This Iris is also rather more delicate, apparently, than 

 the other members of the same group, and it is doubtful if it 

 will survive many seasons, unless in a very warm border. The 

 foliage appears before the flowers, and I notice that it is more 

 affected by hard weather than the others, which may militate 

 against the ripening of the bulbs. Iris Persica, var. purpurea, 

 which is one of Max Leichtlin's introductions, opened a few 

 days before I. Histrio. This variety is a decidedly pretty little 

 flower, blossoming low like the type, but very dark reddish- 

 purple in color, with an orange ridge, and white marking on 

 the fall. Both of these Irises were ready to expand a week 

 earlier, but the temperature at the time dropped to four degrees, 

 Fahrenheit, and their appearance was delayed. I have ob- 

 served that when the flowers named are sheltered from the 

 winds they will endure the lowest temperature we have here 

 and remain uninjured. Over the Irises I fasten frames of glass 

 held in wire frames, but open at the sides, to protect them from 

 snow and storms. The garden is now hidden under the snow, 

 but these flowers will again appear, when more genial condi- 

 tions favor us, as bright as ever and quite uninjured by their 

 temporary eclipse. _. 



Elizabeth, N. J. / • -A', (jr. 



Correspondence. 



The Beauty of Orchids. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest: 



Sir, — In an interesting article on " Orchids," published in the 

 February number of Scribner's Magazine, Mr. W. A. Stiles 

 says : "They have such a high-bred air that no one thinks of 

 questioning their rank as the truearistocracy among flowers. 

 They are so distinct from the mass of garden-flowers that they 

 seem to belong to a nobler race. They possess refinement of 

 form, grace of bearing, delicacy of texture, purity of color, and 

 many of them delicious fragrance — every attribute, indeed, 

 which in a flower compels admiration." Similarly an English 

 amateur wrote not long ago : " Fancy has not conceived such 

 loveliness, complete all round, as theirs — form, color, grace, 

 distribution, detail and broad effect." 



These words certainly echo the feeling of countless horticul- 

 turists and flower-lovers, and I am ready to believe with Mr. 

 Stiles that " the cultivation of Orchids would flourish without 

 the adventitious attraction" which is given by their exotic 

 origin and, often, by their consequent rarity and costliness. 

 Nevertheless, this adventitious attraction has, of course, in- 

 creased their vogue. All Orchids do not deserve the praise which 

 Mr. Stiles gives them as a whole, and some of those which 

 have the least intrinsic charm are among the most popular. 

 The Lycastes, for -instance, have thick, fleshy, clumsy petals, 



which certainly cannot be called delicate ; and sometimes they 

 are muddy and impure in tint. 



But I want especially to note that while very many persons 

 would heartily endorse Mr. Stiles' general estimate of the at- 

 tractiveness of the Orchid race, there are others who boldly 

 question its right to be called nobler, more aristocratic, or in 

 any way more delightful, than other floral races. Showy, pe- 

 culiar, and therefore, as I may say, very aggressive in their 

 claims upon the eye, Orchids seem to have an especial faculty 

 of exciting not only particularly strong likings, but, on the 

 other hand, particularly strong dislikings. If one chances to 

 care about them, nothing else is admitted into comparison 

 with them ; but if not, it seems possible actually to hate them. 

 I have a friend who always humorously insists that their name 

 must be a corruption of " Awkwards " ; and another, an artist, 

 who confesses, " I used not to like them, but my taste has 

 gradually become perverted " ; and a third, who declares, on 

 the contrary, that at first they interested her, but now " they 

 have become intolerable." 



In some cases the feeling against them is doubtless due to 

 the mere fact of their extreme popularity ; some people are 

 naturally prompted to dislike anything which is generally 

 praised, especially if its popularity leads at times to the under- 

 valuation of other commendable things. Again, there are 

 persons who aje instinctively repelled by eccentricity, pecu- 

 liarity, or even novelty ; persons of conservative taste, who 

 delight in the familiar, the normal, even the commonplace, 

 and cling to old things because they have always loved them, 

 and turn away from new things, because to admire them would 

 mean a fresh attitude of mind. 



But a third and better reason may be found for the distaste 

 sometimes shown toward Orchids. What many people call 

 their love for plants is simply a love for flowers. But there 

 are others with whom it means a love for the whole 

 organism as seen individually, and, still more, as seen 

 in the varied yet harmonious environment of natural condi- 

 tions. These people take more delight in the aspect of a 

 flowery meadow than in gathering bunches of Daisies, Butter- 

 cups and Clover ; they would rather stoop for a moment over 

 a rare wild flower, growing at the foot of a forest-tree, than 

 pick it to carry home, preferring to remember the picture 

 it made swinging amid Ferns and Mosses, and flickering 

 lights and shadows, rather than to see the picture it makes 

 when put in a vase on the mantel-piece. And it is among 

 such people, I think, that one often hears expressed a dislike 

 toward Orchids, or, at least, an indifference to their charms. 

 Of course, we are now speaking of the Orchids grown in our 

 hot-houses, which are of foreign origin and usually of epiphy- 

 tal character. The people I have in mind do not deny the 

 beauty of their flowers, or claim that it is less than the beauty 

 of those borne by our native Orchids, which they admire so 

 truly — the fragile sweet-scented pale-pink Pogonia, growing 

 by the roadside in a sunny ditch ; the white-fringed Habenaria, 

 springing in snowy clumps from a tangled corner of a swamp, 

 or its lilac-fringed cousin overtopping the grasses of a river- 

 side field ; the Calopogon flushing patches of pasture to a soft 

 purplish tone, the rosy Cypripedium nodding in some dusky 

 recess at the base of a Pine near the edge of a woodland road, 

 or the splendid parti-colored Calypso gleaming from a boggy 

 corner of the forest's very heart. Nothing, they confess, could 

 be more gorgeous than the flowers of some exotic Orchids, 

 more dazzlingly beautiful than others, more curiously interest- 

 ing, or more delicately dainty and fairy-like, than others again. 

 But, nevertheless, the aspect of a basket of these Orchids, or 

 of a hot-house shelf filled with them, gives them little 

 pleasure. The flowers are beautiful, they say, but the plants 

 are not. 



Rarely, in truth, is an Orchid-plant, grown in our hot- 

 houses, a beautiful object as a whole. Sometimes the 

 foliage is attractive, but often it is not; and when it is, its 

 effect may be injured by the aspect of the naked, oddly- 

 shaped pseudo-bulbs which bear it. Frequently the rich masses 

 or streamers of blossoms develop from long bare gray stalks ; 

 and sometimes such stalks are queerly attached to the body of the 

 plant. Among the Vandas, for instance, we find a tall column 

 of stiffly opposed leaves, bearing, in the most accfdental-seem- 

 ing manner, a long, twisted, dead-looking flower-stalk, the 

 great panicle of whose flowers seems over-heavy for the plant, 

 as well as devoid of any organic relationship with it. " The 

 flowers are beautiful, yes," said one of the friends of whom I 

 have already spoken, with regard to a Vanda ; " but how can 

 I admire them on such a stalk, especially as it looks as though 

 it has been fastened to the plant with a pin ?" To people who 

 feel in this way, cut Orchids, gracefully arranged in a vase, are 

 more satisfactory than growing Orchids, however much they 



