Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-02-25
SUNDAY
Hunting Orchids
Continued from page 7

$N"t''4N~~ ['N"' f~6N
portions at prices representing colossal
profit Orchid people like the Sanders
set to work after the best manner of
Sherlock Holmes. The priceless plant
had arrived among a mass OF CyPrtPe-
dunn insigne; therefore, it must be a
Hima1ayan native-Assam, Sikkim, the
Darjiling district, Nepal, Bhutan.
The Sanders found that the woman's
son was tea-planter on the confines
of Bhutan, which like Nepal is closed y
territory, extremely difficult and dan
gerous of access. Forstermann was asked
to go and find that lovely cypriped in
much the same loose way that Stanley
was asked to go into Africa and find
Livingstone When carefully sounded by
the orchid diplomat the manager of the
plantation in India told everything, for
he it was who had found the sensational
Cypribediuu while shooting on the farther
side of river beyond the British lines,
in the independent territory of Bhutan.
Forstermann set out up-country to Ind
the plant, swan and waded through giant
rivers often waist deep in miasmatic
mud, or plowed his way through the
incredibly dense tropical vegetation, and
at last came upon a glade enclrcled by
rocks steep as wall, and here at last,
with cry of delight, he reached out his
bamboo rake and dragged down masses
of the gorgeous orchid he had sought
so long and so heroical1y.
And SO, on March 9, 1884, upward of
fifty thousand plants of his variety were
offered for sale at auction in London;
and such slump in prices no orchid
lover ever saw before or since.
There is immense range in the perfume
and fragrance of orchids. Some of them
make the air heavy with languorous
perfume, while others, like the lovely
cradle orchid with its curious little
baby" nodding its head inside, simply
reek like a druggists shop Amateurs
frequently comment upon the extraordi-
nary mimetic power of the orchid, such
for example as tie elephant moth and
the butterfly orchid, which latter faith
fully represents a butterfly down to the
minutest details of the antenn9.
You will also see orchids shaped like
fancifu1 gnomes, and long rows of solemn
little penguins, 1udicrously like their
outstanding black-breasted originals, sit
ting meditatively on some sea-girt wave
beaten rock. Nor should one forget to
mention the octopus orchids with their
farreaching tentacles. That well-known
and beautiful specimen the ESPirit:s
Samo, discovered and almost worshiped
by the Spaniards at Panama, was So
called because it suggested to them the
holy dove which descended upon Christ
head at His baptism in the Jordan Many
of these varieties feel perfectly at home
if their native conditions are only initial
ed as Sander initiates the bark of trees,
by means Of long rows of little baskets
of rough bark
But as the orchid is the acknowledged
queen of flowers, SO also is her caprice
regal. remember Sander placing in my
hand a specimen of the gorgeous Disa
grafdifma, the Flower of the Gods,
which he told me came only from Table
Mountain at the Cape of Good Hope IN
South Africa, and which grows nowhere
else on earth 1t is indeed absolutely
unknown even outside a half-rnile circle