﻿THE ORCHID REVIEW. 



ORCHIDS TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 



I have lately been reading a book on Orchids published about twenty-six 

 years ago, and it has been quite a revelation to me, who am but a student 

 in Orchid lore. Only that short time ago there were no hybrids to be 

 chronicled between Cattleya aurea and gigas, or scarcely any hybrids at all 

 for the matter of that. No pure white Cattleya excepting Wageneri, and 

 Dendrobium X Ainsworthii was considered quite a marvellous production. 

 The Cypripedium list contained a modest 57 names, species and hybrids 

 together, and as for Odontoglossum crispum varieties, one hand would 

 almost supply sufficient digits to reckon them on. 



It is the difference between those days and these that has so impressed 

 me. Of course I had read in the Orchid Review and elsewhere, that this 

 and that Orchid had flowered in such and such a recent year, but I never 

 realised how recent, till I missed so many names from the book. Now we 

 can see fresh varieties and new hybrids at almost every meeting of the 

 R.H.S. Named Cypripediums can be counted by the hundred, Cattleya 

 hybrids by dozens ; and as for named crispums! ! ! one approaches this 

 subject with bated breath, both because of number and quality. Such 

 glorious varieties, and of such value, that fifty pounds more or less in 

 the price is hardly considered, and so many, that in their season, every 

 week brings new ones to the front. One can hardly expect that such a 

 pace can be kept up, but there is no doubt the next 25 years will see some 

 wonderful productions ; chiefly home-raised. May some of these master- 

 pieces fall to our share. 



Emily Thwaites. 



Orchis Morio. — A small meadow in the east of England, surrounded 



for its display of O. Morio, among which grew a few O. pyramidalis ; but 

 during the four years the meadow was under the writer's notice the plants 



breadths of it in certain districts. When moist pasture land purpled with 

 Orchises is drained, these plants find it a difficult task in one season to 



which contains thousands of seeds. Such a plant may not throw up flowers 

 the succeeding year, but may devote its energy to forming another tuber, 

 that will certainly flower the next spring. It is the formation of each 

 succeeding tuber by the side of the last that gives these Orchises the name 

 of ■' Walking plants." It is a distinct way of travelling, though 

 certainly not a quick one. — D. S. Fish, in The Garden, Jan. 23, 1904, p. 64. 



