idea of their native homes, so far as description can
possibly supply the place of travel. The earth’s surface
is like the sea, inasmuch as it is pretty nearly the same
all the world over, hut in countries where the mean
temperature is thirty or forty degrees higher than in
England, the clothing of the earth, so far as represented
by vegetation, is of a luxuriance we can scarcely imagine,
and the variety caused by the addition of such distinct
types as tall palms, bananas, grasses, or bamboos and tree
ferns to the more ordinary kinds of tree beauty, and the
further clothing of these with epiphytes and parasites of
the most singular or beautiful description, makes up a
scene of immense interest.
Epiphytal orchids are essentially heat-lovers like
palms they are children of the sun. One may often
travel a long way in the islands where these plants are
most abundant without catching a glimpse of them ; and
this is especially true of Phalcenopsis grandiflora, which
is of all orchids perhaps the least obtrusive in its native
habitats. This trait is, however, the unobtrusiveness of
high birth, they do not care to touch the ground, hut
rather prefer a sphere of their own high up in the trees
overhead. The plants have a charming freedom of
aspect, as thus seen naturally high up in mid-air, screened
from the sun by a leafy canopy, deluged with rams for
half the year or more at least, and fanned by the cool
sea-breezes or monsoons, which doubtless exercise some
potent influence on their health-an influence which we
can but rarely apply to them artificially, and the great y
modified conditions under which we must perforce cultivate
them may not render this one so desirable as it sometimes
appears to be abroad.
In the lowland forests near the equator a peculiar phase
of vegetation is not unfrequently seen. Trees one hundred GREATER MOTH ORCHID (PHALA)JsTOPSIS) AT HOME.
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