86 



ORCHIDS AT HOME. 



The orchid family, Orc/iiJecr, is commonly divided 

 into five great groups, the divisions being founded chiefly 

 upon characters of the anthers. In the cypripedium 

 tribe, the anthers are two, but in the others only one 

 anther is present. The genera best known to garden- 

 ers are the following : 



I. Tribe Epidendre/E. 

 Masdevallia, 

 Dendrobium, 

 Dendrochilum, 

 Spathoglottis, 

 Phaius, 

 II. Tribe Vande.e. 

 Cy mbidium, 

 Zygopetalum, 



Coelogyne, 



Calanthe, 



Epidendrum, 



Cattleya, 



Laslia. 



Oncidium, 

 Miltonia, 



III. 



IV. 



Lycaste, 



Ada, 



Coryanthes, 



Phalaenopsis, 



Stanhopea, 



brides. 



Catasetum, 



Vanda, 



Maxillaria, 



baccolabium 



Odontoglossum, 



Angraecum. 



Tribe Neottie^e. 





Vanilla, 



Goodyera. 



Tribe Ophryde^. 





Orchis, 



Aceras, 



Disa. 



Tribe Cypripedie*. 

 Cypripedium, 



Selenipedium. 



ORCHIDS AT HOME. 



NOTES FROM BR.VZIL. 



THE traveler in the Amazonian region who 

 expects to see great displays of oixhid 

 bloom is doomed to disappointment. Or- 

 chids there are in countless numbers, but 

 they are mostly species with inconspicu- 

 ous flowers, or such as possess no brilliancy of color. 

 And it requires experience to find even these ; the 

 untrained eye will overlook them in the profusion 

 of climbing vegetation and in the dense foliage of 

 the forests of second growth, while in the primeval 

 forest they are only found in the tops of the trees 

 hundreds of feet above one's head, and their pres- 

 ence is only betrayed by perchance a fallen flower 

 or oftener by a breeze of spicy fragrance wafted 

 from above. Anything more desolate than the old 

 forest can hardl}' be imagined ; all is gloomy, the 

 great tree trunks rise high without a branch, the 

 ground is covered with decaying leaves, nothing 

 green meets the eye, the rays of the sun never pene- 

 trate, the air is surcharged with moisture, and often 

 chilly ; there is no undergrowth of any kind, but 

 often great roots from aroidaceous plants which 

 have their home far on high, hang down, rooting in 

 the moist soil and often attaining huge dimensions. 

 High in the tree tops is the home of both animal 

 and vegetable life, but that home is inapproachable, 

 and its inhabitants are invisible. 



During a sojourn of many years on the middle and 

 upper Amazon, during which 1 have wandered on foot 

 and voyaged by canoe many thousands of miles, I re- 

 member but a very few places where orchids impressed 

 me as a conspicuous feature of the scenery. Some of 

 these I propose to describe. 



It is four o'clock on an afternoon in May. The sun, 

 which has blazed fiercely since six in the morning and 

 which has forced us to recline most of the day under 



the arched palm " tolda " which covers the stern of the 

 canoe, is sinking in the west. The breeze from down 

 river which has filled the little triangular sail since 

 about ten o'clock is dying away, and the intolerable 

 glare from the broad bosom of the river and the white 

 mud banks is changing to a soft and pleasant light. As 

 far as we can see, before and behind, stretches the yel- 

 low waste of water ; on either side a dense high wall of 

 foliage with no break, only here and there little bays 

 filled with floating grass or with thousands of that beau- 

 tiful aquatic plant, Eichornia speciosa, which has not 

 inappropriately been called the water hyacinth. Sud- 

 denly a slight change of course shows a break in the 

 wall of foliage, caused by the entrance of a narrow 

 "igaripe" into the main river. We, mindful that dark- 

 ness will soon fall suddenly, order the paddlers to make 

 for the southern shore, and we find what appears to be 

 a deep but narrow branch, or possibly the mouth of a 

 small stream which doubtless forms the outlet of one of 

 the rayraids of lakes which on both banks of the Ama- 

 zon lie parallel to the main river. We enter the stream 

 under a dense arching canopy of foliage which, but for 

 the westering sun, would bring us into darkness ; but in 

 a few minutes the stream broadens and we see before 

 us a narrow winding river, dense walls of foliage to the 

 water's edge on either side ; masses of vines — passifloras, 

 bignonias, and many species of convolvulus, with other 

 climbers unknown to us — draping every branch and trail- 

 ing in the water. Monkeys and parrots, startled by our 

 abrupt intrusion scamper and fly away with loud pro- 

 testations against our invasions of their home, and soon 

 the only sound is the steady plash of the paddlers in 

 the dark sluggish water. 



The stream continues winding, the vegetation pre- 

 serving the same general features for some distance, and 

 the rise of land suitable for a night encampment which 

 we had hoped to find does not appear. We had noticed 

 no orchids, and their non-existence seemed strange, for 

 generally on the branches of the trees overhanging 



