That is, so Nature
orders it; whether my descendants will be careful to allow her fair play
depends on circumstances over which I have not the least control.
For among their innumerable claims to a place apart among all things
created, orchids may boast immortality. Said Sir Trevor Lawrence, in the
speech which opened our famous Congress, 1885: "I do not see, in the
case of most of them, the least reason why they should ever die. The
parts of the orchideae are annually reproduced in a great many instances,
and there is really no reason they should not live for ever unless, as
is generally the case with them in captivity, they be killed by errors
in cultivation." Sir Trevor was addressing an assemblage of
authorities--a parterre of kings in the empire of botany--or he might
have enlarged upon this text.
The epiphytal orchid, to speak generally, and to take the simple form,
is one body with several limbs, crowned by one head. Its circulation
pulsates through the whole, less and less vigorously, of course, in the
parts that have flowered, as the growing head leaves them behind. At
some age, no doubt, circulation fails altogether in those old limbs, but
experience does not tell me distinctly as yet in how long time the
worn-out bulbs of an Oncidium or a Cattleya, for example, would perish
by natural death. One may cut them off when apparently lifeless, even
beginning to rot, and under proper conditions--it may be a twelvemonth
after--a tiny green shoot will push from some "eye," withered and
invisible, that has slept for years, and begin existence on its own
account.
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