About Orchids, page 29 by Frederick Boyle
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stems are no improvement. Men interested in such matters began to long for fresh fields, and they knew where to look. Linnæus had told them something of exotic orchids in 1763, though his knowledge was gained through dried specimens and drawings. One bulb, indeed--we spare the name--showed life on arrival, had been planted, and had flowered thirty years before, as Mr. Castle shows. Thus horticulturists became aware, just when the information was most welcome, that a large family of plants unknown awaited their attention; plants quite new, of strangest form, of mysterious habits, and beauty incomparable. Their notions were vague as yet, but the fascination of the subject grew from year to year. Whilst several hundred species were described in books, the number in cultivation, including all those gathered by Sir Joseph Banks, and our native kinds, was only fifty. Kew boasted no more than one hundred and eighteen in 1813; amateurs still watched in timid and breathless hope.
Gradually they came to see that the new field was open, and they entered with a rush. In 1830 a number of collections still famous in the legends of the mystery are found complete. At the Orchid Conference, Mr. O'Brien expressed a "fear that we could not now match some of the specimens mentioned at the exhibitions of the Horticultural Society in Chiswick Gardens between 1835 and 1850;" and extracts which he gave from reports confirm this suspicion. The number of species cultivated at that time was comparatively small. People grew magnificent "specimens" in place of many handsome pots. We read of things amazing to the experience of forty years later. Among the contributions of Mrs. Lawrence, mother to our "chief," Sir Trevor, was an Aerides with thirty to forty flower spikes; a Cattleya with twenty spikes; an Epidendrum bicornutum, difficult to keep alive, much more to bloom, until the last few years, with "many spikes;" an Oncidium, "bearing a head of golden flowers four feet across." Giants dwelt in our greenhouses then. < previous next >