The Quest and Culture of Orchids 
By G. BERTRAND MITCHELL 
PART I 
A S evidence of the increasing interest in this 
country in that most beautiful, most esthetic 
plant of all the floral kingdom, the orchid, 
there has been organized in New York City during 
the past few months the Society of Amateur Orchid 
Cultivators. It does not follow by any means that 
every member is, strictly speaking, an amateur, for as 
a matter of fact, one may find in this organization the 
names of the best known orcbid growers in the coun¬ 
try, and also the names of those who are not even 
amateurs, but merely orchid enthusiasts. 
It would be difficult to find any branch of plant 
culture so full of interesting possibilities, of such con¬ 
stant revelations as 
follow even a super¬ 
ficial study of orch¬ 
idaceous plant life. 
“Why my orchids 
are like great fami¬ 
lies of children to 
me, ” said a well- 
known horticultur¬ 
ist the other day. 
“Everyone of them 
seems human, with 
no two eXactly 
alike — even Yhen 
of the same species. 
Of course there is a 
close resemblance 
of tbe blossoms on 
the same stalk, but 
this next plant, its 
neighbor or closer 
still its relative, is as different as are our own broth¬ 
ers and sisters.” It is intensely interesting to learn 
that each part of a flower has its share of the com¬ 
mon labor; that “the spots and fringes, silken cur¬ 
tains and waving banners, “delicate or pungent odors 
are not mere adornments, but all are essential to tbe 
scheme for the perpetuation of this race of plants, 
and as one has said, “though they do not spin, they 
toil with a wisdom and foresight that Solomon might 
have envied. ” 
As every plant lover knows, the orchids, though 
extremely diverse within certain limits and differing 
superficially in many ways, are still formed upon one 
common plan which is really only a modification of 
that observable in such flowers as the narcissus or 
snowdrop. 
The' flower of an orchid has three inner divisions 
(^petals'), and three outer divisions (sepals), mostly of 
the same texture and petal-like appearance. One of 
the inner set, the lahellum or lip, which is really the 
upper petal turned upside down, “to enable insects,” 
as Darwin says, “to enter tbe flower more easily, ” has 
often a fluted edge or it may have either a beautiful 
or a grotesque shape, and is generally the most bril¬ 
liantly colored of the petals. Besides secreting the 
nectar, and forming the receptacle for holding this 
fluid, its attractive appearance draws to the plant the 
tiny animal life, the necessary agent for its propa¬ 
gation, thus making it the most important of the 
external envelopes of the flower. Just how impor¬ 
tant it is, one realizes wdien told that with hardly an 
exception the 
orchid depends so 
entirely upon in¬ 
sects for fertiliza¬ 
tion that the failure 
to perform its func¬ 
tions would result 
in the extinction of 
this family of plant 
life. Several orch¬ 
ids belonging to the 
Arethuseae, have 
lips so sensitive that 
at the least touch 
they spring up and 
imprison the in¬ 
sect, forcing it 
against the pollen 
masses which ad¬ 
here to and are 
carried off on its 
body as it escapes through some narrow passage. 
In perhaps half an hour the lips open and are ready 
for the next visitor. 
The w'ise men assert that in some species there 
are secret springs and hair triggers that are sud¬ 
denly let loose, launching tiny barbs or arrows 
against repacious ants or bees which have eaten 
their w^ay to these life-giving centers and by this 
means, the seed destined to insure the plant from 
perpetual sterility is saved from destruction. 
The stamens in most flowers surround in a ring the 
pistils. “There is but one well-developed stamen in 
all common orchids which is confluent with the pistils 
and together they form the column. Ordinary sta¬ 
mens consist of a filament (not always seen in the 
orchid) which carries the anther—a sort of case filled 
with the waxy or meal-like pollen which fertilizes the 
pistil. The division of the anther into two cells is so 
ARRIVAL OF AN IMPORTATION OF ORCHIDS 
90 
li 
