There is a lofty mass of rock in front,
with a pool below, and a pleasant sound of splashing water. Many orchids
of the largest size are planted out here--Cypripedium, Cattleya,
Sobralia, Phajus, Loelia, Zygopetalum, and a hundred more,
"specimens," as the phrase runs--that is to say, they have ten, twenty,
fifty, flower spikes. I attempt no more descriptions; to one who knows,
the plain statement of fact is enough, one who does not is unable to
conceive that sight by the aid of words. But the Sobralias demand
attention. They stand here in clumps two feet thick, bearing a
wilderness of loveliest bloom--like Irises magnified and glorified by
heavenly enchantment. Nature designed a practical joke perhaps when she
granted these noble flowers but one day's existence each, while dingy
Epidendrums last six months, or nine. I imagine that for stateliness
and delicacy combined there are no plants that excel the Sobralia. At
any single point they may be surpassed--among orchids, be it understood,
by nothing else in Nature's realm--but their magnificence and grace
together cannot be outshone.
I must not dwell upon the marvels here, in front, on either side, and
above--a hint is enough. There are baskets of _Loelia anceps_ three
feet across, lifted bodily from the tree in their native forest where
they had grown perhaps for centuries. One of them--the white variety,
too, which aesthetic infidels might adore, though they believed in
nothing--opened a hundred spikes at Christmas time; we do not concern
ourselves with minute reckonings here.
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