CATTLEYA SCHRODERAE VAR. MISS MARY MEASURES.]

CYPRIPEDIUM INSIGNE

Here is a house full of Cypripedium insigne; nothing else therein save a
row of big Cymbidiums in vases down the middle, Odontoglossum citrosmum
and Cattleya citrina hanging on wires overhead. Every one knows this
commonest of Cypripeds, though many may be unacquainted with the name.
Once I looked into a show of window-gardening in the precincts of
Westminster Abbey, and among the poor plants there, treasures of the
poorest, I found a Cypripedium insigne--very healthy and well-grown too.
But when I called the judges' attention, they politely refused to believe
me, though none of them could say what the mysterious vegetable was--not
the least curious detail of the incident. The flower cannot be called
beautiful, but undeniably it is quaint, and the honest unsophisticated
public loves it. Moreover the bloom appears in November, lasting till
Christmas, if kept quite cool. The species was introduced from Sylhet so
long ago as 1820, but it flourishes in many districts on the southern
slope of the Himalayas. New habitats are constantly discovered.

There are 505 plants in this house, and if individual flowers be not
striking commonly--that is, flowers of the normal type--the spectacle is
as pretty as curious when hundreds are open at once, apple-green, speckled
with brown and tipped with white. But to my taste, as a 'grower,' the
sight is pleasant at all seasons, for the green and glossy leaves
encircle each pot so closely that they form a bank of foliage without a
gap all round. But besides this house we have one much larger elsewhere,
containing no less than 2500 examples of the same species. If no two
flowers of an orchid on the same plant be absolutely similar, as experts
declare--and I have often proved the rule--one may fancy the sum of
variation among three thousand. Individually, however, it is so minute in
the bulk of Cypripedium insigne that a careless observer sees no
difference among a hundred blooms. I note some of the prominent
exceptions.

_Clarissimum._--Large, all white, except a greenish tinge at base of the
dorsal, and the broad yellow shield of the column.

_Laura Kimball_, on the other hand, is all ochreous yellow, save the
handsome white crown of the dorsal and a narrow white margin descending
from it.

_Statterianum_ is much like this, but spotted in the usual way.

_Bohnhoffianum_ has a dorsal of curious shape. The cres