Sir Trevor Lawrence observed the other day: "With regard to
the longevity of orchids, I have one which I know to have been in this
country for more than fifty years, probably even twenty years longer
than that--_Renanthera coccinea_." The finest specimens of Cattleya in
Mr. Stevenson Clarke's houses have been "grown on" from small pieces
imported twenty years ago. If there were more collections which could
boast, say, half a century of uninterrupted attention, we should have
material for forming a judgment; as a rule, the dates of purchase or
establishment were not carefully preserved till late years.
But there is one species of Cattleya which must needs have seventy years
of existence in Europe, since it had never been re-discovered till 1890.
When we see a pot of _C. labiata_, the true, autumn-flowering variety,
more than two years old, we know that the very plant itself must have
been established about 1818, or at least its immediate parent--for no
seedling has been raised to public knowledge.[4]
In avowing a certain indifference to Cattleyas, I referred to the bulk,
of course. The most gorgeous, the stateliest, the most imperial of all
flowers on this earth, is _C. Dowiana_--unless it be _C. aurea_, a
"geographical variety" of the same. They dwell a thousand miles apart at
least, the one in Colombia, the other in Costa Rica; and neither occurs,
so far as is known, in the great intervening region.
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