chideae_, so remarkable for the
mimic forms of other things, that its blossoms delight to assume, is
also pre-eminent in gorgeous beauty. Take the _Sobraliae_,--terrestrial
species from Central America, where they form extensive thickets,
growing thrice the height of man, with slender nodding stems, and
alternate willow-like leaves, and terminal racemes loaded with
snow-white, pink, crimson, or violet flowers.[219] Imagine the crushing
through "thickets" of the lovely _S. macrantha_! The large lily-like
blossoms of this species are eight inches long, and as many wide, of the
richest purple crimson, and of the most elegant shape conceivable, with
the lip so wrapped round the column as to appear funnel-shaped, bordered
by an exquisitely-cut fringe.

I have before alluded to _Phajus Tankervilliae_, that rich lily-like
spike of blossom which I stumbled on in the midst of a dense thicket in
the mountains of Jamaica. Another terrestrial genus of great elegance is
_Cypripedium_, of which we have one native species, _C. calceolus_, the
yellow lady's slipper,--one of the most charming, but the rarest and
most difficult of propagation, of British plants. But this is far
excelled in beauty by many of the exotic species; as, for example, the
exquisite _C. barbatum_ from Malacca. The very foliage is princely; for
the nervures and cross-veins form a network pattern of dark green upon
the light green area of each broad leaf. The blossom rears up its noble
head erect, with its standard-petal of white, striped with green and
purple, the wing-petals studded with purple tubercles along their edges,
and the lip or slipper-shaped petal of a dark purple hue.

My readers may have occasionally noticed a little plant, in the most
recherchees stove-houses, of so much delicacy and preciousness that it
is invariably kept under a bell-glass. I mean the _Anaectochilus
setaceus_. It belongs to this tribe, and is a terrestrial species,
growing about the roots of the trees in the humid forests of Ceylon. Its
exquisite loveliness has attracted the attention of even the apathetic
Cingalese, who call it by the poetical epithet of _Wanna Raja_, or king
of the forest. It does not appear to possess any peculiar attractiveness
in its blossoms,--indeed, I have never seen it in flower; but its
leaves, which grow in opposite pairs, are elegantly heart-shaped, of a
deep rich greenish-brown hue, approaching to black, of a surface which
resembles velvet, reticulat