ORCHIDS. 
For the strange shapes and glowing colors of their flowers 
and ingenuity of devices for securing cross fertilization. Orchids 
are among the most fascinating of plants. 
Requiring little nourishment, save that afforded ])\ air and 
water, the struggle for existence in the luxuriant tropical forests 
where they are most abundant has led many species to seek 
footholds in the forks of high trees. There li\-ing through the 
long dry season in their precarious situation by the stored up 
nourishment in their stout pseudo-bulbs, at the approach of 
the tropical rains, they throw out their brilliant flowers, in 
courtship, as the botanists believe, of those insects without whose 
aid the life giving pollen could not reach and fertilize the o^1des 
(seeds). Delicate Hues of color leading down from the broad 
petals into the throat of the flower guide the winged visitor to 
the honey-sack within, and a hair trigger more deUcate than any 
human mechanism falls as he enters and attaches to him the 
sticky pollen masses. These in turn are brushed off by the 
projecting stigma or top of the ovule column in the next Orchid 
flower he visits. 
Of our native Orchids, the most imposing are the Cyrtopcd- 
iums of the Mangrove thickets of Florida which bear spikes of 
yellowish flowers three feet high, and the pink Moccasin Flower 
(Cypripedium Spectabile) of our Pennsylvania woods. South 
America and Mexico contribute the flamboyant rose or magenta 
colored Cattleyas and Laelias so familiar in florists' windows, as 
well as the yellow and lirown flowered Oncidiums. The Phillip- 
pines and East Indies send us the butterfly-like Phalaenopeis. 
From the Indian region come most of the strange dark-hucd 
^loccasin Flowers (Cypripediums) and curious Dendrobiums 
whose brilliant flowers spring from apparently lifeless canes. 
The hybridizers have added to this natural wealth count- 
less beautiful hyl:)rids, many of them crosses between 
genera such as Laelia with Cattleya. 
