PRE ORC MID RENT. 
VoL. XV.| MARCH, 1907. {[No. 171. 
*OBITUARY. 
JosEPH BROOME.—We greatly regret to hear of the death of Joseph Broome, 
Esq., J-P., Sunny Hill, Llandudno, which took place on January 25th last, 
the cause being heart failure, after an attack of congestion of the lungs. 
The deceased gentleman was born at Preston Brook, near Frodsham, on 
May Ist, 1825, and consequently was in his 82nd year. For many years 
Mr. Broome was a great lover and successful cultivator of Orchids; indeed, 
he was a great lover of flowers generally, from the most gorgeous Cattleya 
to the humblest of garden flowers. His collection of Orchids was a fairly 
large and representative one, and his gardener, Mr. Axtell, remarks that 
most of it he had imported himself. He loved an Orchid for the flower 
itself, not for its market value. Many good things have flowered in his 
collection, but he was never smitten with the craze for new things, and 
never paid fabulous prices for them, neither did he care much for hybrids. 
He judged a flower entirely by its merits, but was very loyal to his first 
favourites, as he appreciated any common Orchid more if he could remember 
the same plant fifteen or twenty years ago. He once told us that it was 
one of his chief pleasures in Orchid growing to watch imported plants 
gradually establish themselves, produce their growths, and ultimately 
develop their flowers. Mr. Axtell remarks that he grew Orchids as much 
to give others pleasure as himself, and every visitor to Sunny Hill went 
away with a lovely bunch of flowers. 
Mr. Broome always took great interest in the Manchester Royal 
Botanical and Horticultural Society, and received many Gold and Silver 
Medals from that Society for Orchids and other plants, as far back as 1874. 
He became a member of the Council in 1869, Treasurer in 1876, and 
Chairman in 1887, when he succeeded Dr. John Watts. He once showed 
a plant of Vanda teres at Manchester with 250 blooms, which was greatly 
admired. He was the first to flower the beautiful Cattleya velutina, Rchb. 
., in 1870, the author remarking (Gard. Chron. 1870, p. 140) that a flower 
had been sent to him from the collection of Joseph Broome, Esq., of Dids- 
bury, Manchester (a former residence), and that it was probably a native of 
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