Wal 
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(Continued from p. 30) 
Here are also a few notes published in the Gardeners’ Chronicle relating to the 
habitat of Cattleya Lawrenceana : 
“ This plant does not occur actually in the Roraima, as seems to have been 
“ supposed in England, but along the bed of the Kookenaam River, where it flows 
“ along the base of the South side of the twin mountains of Roraima and Kookenaam, 
“ at a level of only about 3750 feet above that of the sea, and not of from 6000 to 
“ 8000 feet as would be the case did the plant come from the Roraima itself. , 
The author of these notes having also sent a sketch showing Mount Kookenaam 
on the background, continues : — 
“ The stream in the sketch is the Kookenaam River, which here runs along the 
“ bottom of a deep channel which it has cut for itself through the surrounding bare 
“ savannah lands. In the shelter afforded by the high banks of this channel, among 
“ the countless blocks of stone, of all shapes and sizes, which here occupy the bed 
“ of the stream, grow many shrubs and stunted trees, and some few trees of greater 
“ height.... It is on the trunks and branches, often big and gnarled, of the shrubs 
“and trees down in this gully that Cattleya Lawrenceana grows in abundant splendour. 
“ Even as I was making the sketch I saw on a tree close to me two most magni- 
“ ficent clumps of this Orchid, on a tree overhanging the bathing pool of the Arekoona 
“ village of Teroota, the better of the two having five spikes of flowers, of which 
“one bore nine, each of the others eight blossoms, in all forty-one, of some of the 
“ Jargest and finest Cattleya flowers ever seen on a single small plant, the roots of 
“ which easily lay on my extended hand. 
“Our Christmas decorations that day consisted of an enormous pile of these 
flowers. And these were gathered after the Indians employed by Mr. SErpEL had, 
day after day for many weeks, collected from that immediate neighbourhood two, 
three, or even six enormous basketfuls of this plant, each basket a strong man’s 
“load. These baskets, by the way, as many of the plants happened to be in full 
“bloom, were strangely beautiful. The Indians asserted that the Cattleya, which they 
expressively called by a word which means “ blossom of the wood , (trunk), grows 
also along several of the other similar streamlets in the neighbourhood, though, 
they added, not always so large and fine in form. 
” 
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