The Florida agriculturist., 1889-01-02

u,
grotesque, weird, beautiful; some OF them
almost aWe-inspiring, as the Espiritu
Santof; others mirth-provoking, witness
the Oricidium raniferum, or frog orchid /;
others appeal to the eye for their beauty,
as the wonderful Cattleya mossia alba,
others delight because of their delicate,
delicious fragrance; and some possess an
opposite quality-take for example, the
Lizard orchis, which has strong, dis
agreeable goat-like or lizard-like smell !;
but they one and all preserve the family
characteristic of oddity True it is, that
if any human family should set out to
follow such a systematic course of eccen-
tricity in dress and adornment, as these
curious flowers indulge in, that family
would be at once stamped as insane.
Therefore, we may well term the orchids
the lunatics of the floral kingdom, view
which is further carried out by the fact
that very few of them are of any ecOnomi-
cal or practical value; among these scant
exceptions are the famous vanilla bean,
and salep, which is a delicate and nutri-
tious article of food obtained from the
root tubercles of a number of species.
When we seek to trace resemblance to
their often grotesque shapes, we are at
once compelled to step outside the vege-
table and into the animal kingdom.
But even here "there is method in mad
ness, diversified, capricious, as are their
forms, the orchid flowers are all resolv-
able into notifications of three sepals of
the calyx, and three petals of the corolla,
exceptions being clearly traceable to CO.
hesion or suppression of parts; they have
a greater affinity with the iris than with
any other common garden flowers, but
they differ from all other flowers in the
total suppression of one or two of these
three anthers; as rule, their pollen is
found in solid waxy masses, and of the
three inner petals takes the shape of a
lip, with THEY'VE had almost said,
avOWed, ,-Object of attracting and guild
ing their insect visitors, who play most
important partinfertilizing thesefowers,
for, as we have seen, they are, as rule,
hermaphrOdite.
Did you never see bees so heavy laden
with the yellow powder, the pollen of the
flowers they have rifed, that they could
not fly?
1t is what those poor insects might
well term, ''too much of good thing -
their owners often call it ''club disorder" !"
but it is all the same to the pollen-grow-
ers; so that their product is distributed,
it matters nothing to them how it is
done, it is the doing, and not the manner
of it, that affects their destinies and how
important this matter of fertilization is
to the orchids, is shown in the fact that
for a long time the vanilla aromatica
raised in the English t-houses, remained
sterile, until the placing of the pollen it.
self upon the stigmata of the flowers
fruit frtffffB6asf Basf1ie ifgeFad IaqtjQp that perfect,
SO we see that orchids have good rua-
son to hang~out their under lip with
standing Invitation to the passing in
sect to walk in and help itseE.
If we were to Judge of these curious
flowers by the grotesque masquerade
costumes in which they appear, we would
say that they must have been great
travellers, and acute observers, as well as
born mimics, so closely have they copied,
sometimes only caricatured, objects ami
mate and inanimate, scattered all over
the world.
Ourlimited spaceforbids thatweshould
do more than make a passing reference to
the greater number of these shapes; to
trace their various resemblances, it is
necessary to step beyond the vegetable,
into the animal kingdom.
Insects are the class the orchids have
drawn upon more freely than any other,
and so, all over the world, except in the
coldest and most arid regions, where
alone the cosmopolitan orchid dwells
not,-may be seen these wondrOus vege-
table copies OF insect life.
In the meadows and pastures of Eng
land, for instance, flourish at certain