INCONSPICUOUS AND RARELY CULTIVATED ORCUIDS. 137 



A COLLECTION of Oi'chids should properly aim at embracing the whole 

 of this very large natm-al order of plants, made up of tribes and sub- 

 tribes, of many genera, and a vast number of species. The Orchideas may 

 challenge comparison with any natural order in the beauty, colom-, and 

 diversity of their flowers. The natural order shows endless variety in 

 modes of growth, epiphytal and terrestrial, in size, colour, shape, and 

 mode of flower production, in peculiarities of fertilisation, Sec. If an 

 Orchid lover grows a selection of these plants it will generally be one 

 which consists mainly of the more showy genera, such as Cattleya, Laelia, 

 Odontoglossum, Dendrobium and perhaps Cypripedium. Even then many 

 very striking and large flowered genera will be neglected, such as 

 Stanhopea, Houlletia, Acineta, Luddemannia, Gongora, Maxillaria, 

 Schomburghkia, ike. Even such beautiful genera as Aerides and Sacco- 

 labium are now comparatively rarely seen in collections, though in the 

 palmy days of the great Chiswick Shows they were prominent in exhibits, 

 and were greatly admired. 



It perhaps may be said that Orchid importers do not find it pay to 

 import the smaller and less conspicuous members of the natural order, 

 however strange or beautiful the}' may be. This might be so if it were 

 necessary to send out collectors expressly or mainly to collect them. But 

 the additional cost of including with Cattleyas and other New World 

 genera such gems as Polycycnis or Sievekiugia, and the rarer and choicer 

 Epidendrums would be very small. So with the Old World, where 

 collectors of Dendrobiums and C^i^ripediums would certainly" come across 

 lovely little Bulbophyllums, Cirrhopetalums, &c. 



It comes then to this, that collectors would greatly add to the personal, 

 as well as the scientific, interest of their Orchid collections if they were 

 to include in them the smaller and less showy genera. They would in so 

 doing be but following the example of collector in other branches of 

 natural history, for example, entomologists, who do not disdain the 

 smallest and least attractive of insects. 



To go into particulars, let me say that out of the 168 species of 

 Dendrobiums enumerated in the " Flora of British India," there are 

 probably not more than one half in cultivation. Yet many of these 

 rarely seen plants can easily be obtained from India by letter or parcel 

 post. 



The same applies to the genus Cirrhopetalum, of which many species 

 are striking and beautiful. So again of Bulbophyllums, botanically 

 neai'ly allied to Dendrobiums, the curious Dendrobium amplum of the 

 Khasia Hills, and the Bornean D. Treacher ianum being connecting links 

 between the two genera. Bulbophyllum and Cirrhopetalum are so con^ 

 nected bv cross afiinities that the two f^enera are diflicult to discriminate. 

 Sir Joseph Hooker, in his "Flora of British India," says: "My keeping 

 them apart is due to the consideration of convenience, and the fact that 

 all my attempts to commingle the species of both have resulted in a 

 chaotic aggregate with the most unsatisfactory sectional characters, in 

 fact, a far less natural result than the keeping them apart." Among the 

 most obvious characteristics by which Cirrhopetalums may be recognised 

 are their small monophyllous pseudo-bulbs, produced from a scaly, creeping 

 rhizome, their umbellate inflorescences, or rather racemes reduced to 



