104 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
February, 1913 
flower, and the separation of the sexes lias given rise to such 
distinct and unlike forms that for a long time botanists thought 
them to belong to totally distinct genera. Of their fertilization 
Darwin says: “Nature has endowed these plants with what must 
be called for want of a better term, sensitiveness, and with the 
remarkable power of forcibly ejecting their pollen to a distance. 
Hence, when certain definite points of the flower are touched by 
an insect, the pollinia are shot out like an arrow which is not 
barbed, but has a blunt and excessively adhesive point. The 
insect, disturbed by so sharp a 
blow, or after having eaten its fill, 
flies sooner or later to a female 
plant, and while standing in the 
same position as it did when 
struck, the pollen end of the arrow 
is inserted into the stigmatic cavi¬ 
ty, and a mass of pollen left on 
its viscid surface. Thus, and thus 
alone, at least three species of the 
genus Catasetum are fertilized." 
Notwithstanding their elaborate 
artifices; orchids are most depend¬ 
ant creatures, each species abso¬ 
lutely relying for the propagation 
of its kind on the special insect 
carrier it has selected. Thus we 
see whole groups reduced to the 
commonplace device of flaunting 
their white banners in the dark, 
the better to attract the night-fly¬ 
ing moths by which they are 
fertilized. So, too, and for the 
same purpose, the sweet-scented 
varieties of the Philippines give 
forth their perfumes only after 
dusk. The Aeranthes sesquipe- 
dalis of Madagascar, a wonderful 
flower, with a nectary prolonged 
into a sheath from twelve to 
eighteen inches deep, can only be 
fertilized by a moth with a pro¬ 
boscis long enough to reach the 
honey secreted at the bottom of the pouch. This 
abnormal lepidoptera failing, the aeranthes must 
likewise perish. 
Interest in orchids, however, is by no means 
confined'to these curiosities. The great attrac¬ 
tion is really on the esthetic side. The beauty 
of a large number of them is unequalled in the 
works of Nature, and would be sufficient to 
attract attention were orchids as common as 
daisies in the field. Naturally their interest is / 
enhanced by their rarity. Orchids are never 
common. Although sometimes plentiful enough 
in the inaccessible tropics, they are, even there, 
but sparingly distributed at the best. There are 
many species, but each species is composed of 
comparatively few individual members. Wher¬ 
ever found they are among the unusual flow¬ 
ers, and yet the great family is so widely scat¬ 
tered that its members tenant nearly as wide an area of the 
earth's surface as do human beings. Some of them make their 
abode where man cannot live. They are found on the hot and 
arid hillsides of India, in the bogs of Maine and Canada, in the 
meadows of England, in the jungles of Brazil, in the wooded 
canyons of California, on the bare mountains of Sumatra, and 
indeed, except for the polar regions, there is no country to which 
they are not native. One species, Oncidium nubigenum, the 
“orchid of the clouds,” is found in the Peruvian Andes at a height 
of fourteen thousand feet above sea level, and variations of the 
epidendrum grow far above the timber line, where trees are un¬ 
known and snow is almost a daily occurrence. Other species 
are among the familiar wildflowers of the temperate regions, 
and “long-purples” and “dead-men’s-fingers,” flowers mentioned 
in Hamlet, are both orchids. Generally speaking, however, the 
species represented in the temperate zones are inconspicuous, 
usually to extreme modesty, fre¬ 
quently are devoid of beauty, and 
know no such variety of color or 
size as do their exotic sisters. 
While in saying this I am not 
forgetting the lovely dendrobiums 
of Australia, nor the many, charm¬ 
ing cypripediums of the American 
woods, yet it is uncompromisingly 
true that without the tropic varie¬ 
ties, interest in orchids would be 
confined entirely to the botanist or 
to him who has the patience to seek 
out the wonderful, wild plants of 
bog and swamp. Even then the 
stimulus would not be found that 
is now given by the many curious 
and puzzling forms, the wonderful 
contrivances and the surpassing 
splendor of the southern importa¬ 
tions. From the tropics alone all 
orchids of horticultural value are 
derived, and amateurs have re¬ 
cruited their great collections from 
the same regions. 
Numerous as exotic orchids are 
to-day, nearly all of them have been 
imported within the last sixty years. 
During this period the orchid-grow¬ 
ing regions of the world have been 
ransacked, and while there are spots 
still untouched, jungle recesses 
which so far have baffled the most 
ardent explorers, whole sections have had their 
glorious plants packed off by thousands to Eng¬ 
land and America, leaving in some cases their na¬ 
tive habitat bare. Thus entire sections of Colom¬ 
bia, once the home of Miltonia Vexillaria, have 
been denuded of their treasures, and persons de¬ 
siring specimens of this plant must now wait the 
tedious process of root division or the more un¬ 
certain results of seedling propagation. In these 
days the most ardently sought for of all orchids 
is the Odontoglossum crispum. During one 
search for this species when ten thousand plants 
were collected, four thousand trees were cut down 
to obtain them, and the camp was moved on week 
by week as the explorers exhausted the avail¬ 
able supply. It has been estimated that a tree 
has fallen for every three pieces of crispum in 
cultivation. The forest devastation that their 
possession has cost the world may be realized 
when it is considered nothing unusual for a 
single collector to have five thousand of these plants on his shelves. 
The small island, Santa Catarina, off the coast of Brazil, was 
the home of Laelia elegans, where with Laelia purpurata and 
Cattleya Leopoldii, it flourished in a profusion seldom known to 
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