No one in England has
raised a plant from seed--that we may venture to say definitely. Mr.
Cookson and Mr. Veitch, perhaps others also, have obtained living germs,
but they died incontinently. Frenchmen, aided by the climate, have been
rather more successful. MM. Bleu and Moreau have both flowered seedling
Odontoglots. M. Jacob, who takes charge of M. Edmund de Rothschild's
orchids at Armainvilliers, has a considerable number of young plants.
The reluctance of Odontoglots to propagate is regarded as strange; it
supplies a constant theme for discussion among orchidologists. But I
think that if we look more closely it appears consistent with other
facts known. For among importations of every genus but this--and
Cypripedium--a plant bearing its seed-capsules is frequently discovered;
but I cannot hear of such an incident in the case of Odontoglossums.
They have been arriving in scores of thousands, year by year, for half a
century almost, and scarcely anyone recollects observing a seed-capsule.
This shows how rarely they fertilize in their native home. When that
event happens, the Odontoglossum is yet more prolific than most, and the
germs, of course, are not so delicate under their natural conditions.
But the moral to be drawn is that a country once stripped will not be
reclothed.
I interpolate here a profound observation of Mr. Roezl. That wonderful
man remarked that Odontoglossums grow upon branches thirty feet above
the ground.
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