The history of orchids at Kew

<< Orchids at Kew and Wakehurst Place

Growing orchids at Kew>>
The First Records Building up the Collection Orchid Houses at Kew Specialist growers Hybridising Early Research The Present Day

The History of
Orchids at Kew

Orchids have been cultivated at Kew for more than two hundred years. The garden made by Frederick, Prince of Wales, in the estate he leased in 1730, and the scientific institute which began to develop on the same site in 1841, both included orchids.

Not unexpectedly, over the years the ever-changing collection has experienced a remarkable series of vicissitudes. For most of the time the orchids have received special attention from dedicated professional gardeners. Special houses have been provided for the plants and the collection has been enhanced by bequests and donations. But these good times have alternated with a series of setbacks. Many plants have been lost by poor cultural conditions, indifferent housing, changing and often inexperienced staff, and a shortage of funds for the care and maintenance of plants that were sometimes regarded as curious luxuries. Orchids at Kew were a special target for destruction by a group of suffragettes in 1912. The great drought of 1921, when only half the usual amount of rain fell, resulted in unexpected losses inside some of the glasshouses (the cause was eventually traced to the water being used on the plants - it was seawater, taken from the tidal Thames!); after that, rainwater tanks were :installed. More recently, a disastrous power failure on a cold night in the winter of 1976 caused many losses among the orchids. The severe storms of 1987 and 1990, though causing great damage to the trees at Kew, did not directly affect the orchid plants, but the Lower Nursery, where they are mostly housed, was badly damaged. Similar setbacks are experienced in any garden, however, and often result in improvements and renewed enthusiasm once normality has been restored.
Since its inception, the orchid collection at Kew has been derived from a variety of sources. Botanists on expeditions have always sent back plants, but many orchids have been presented by growers and enthusiasts from many different walks of life. Despite the fact that the collection has always been one predominantly of wild species, some of the earliest hybrids were made at Kew about a hundred years ago. The Kew botanist Robert Rolfe was instrumental in starting the records of orchid hybridizing in a careful and scientific way which has continued to this day, while publications on the cultivation of orchids by curators and orchid growers alike have been widely acclaimed and are still useful references. A resurgence of interest in recent years in growing, propagation and research, has put the collection in the forefront again, as this book makes clear.

Introduction Building up the Collection Orchid Houses at Kew Specialist growers Hybridizing Early Research The Present Day

The First Records

The first gardens recorded in the village of Kew date from the seventeenth century. Sir Henry Capel's garden was visited several times by the diarist John Evelyn who was full of praise for the celebrated garden at Kew' and the unusual plants growing there.
The connection with the royal family began in the early years of the eighteenth century, when George Il and Queen Caroline made their summer home at Ormonde Lodge, Richmond, whose estate ran alongside the river between Richmond and Kew. In 1730 their eldest son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, took a lease on the adjoining estate at Kew which had previously belonged to the Capel family. With the aid of William Kent, the noted landscape gardener, artist and sculptor, Frederick laid out a new garden and began to amass a collection of exotic plants. Princess Augusta, whom he married in 1736, not only shared his enthusiasm but also took a great personal interest in the gardens. They were advised by the Scottish botanist John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, who became extremely influential after the death of the Prince of Wales in 1751. The gardens expanded in size and scope and were embellished with new buildings designed by William Chambers. A Scottish gardener, William Aiton, who had trained at the Chelsea Physic Garden under the celebrated Philip Miller, was employed in 1759 to take charge of a small physic garden which was dedicated to botany, and aimed 'to contain all the plants known upon earth'! Thus 1759 is often cited as the start of the collection as a 'botanic garden' as we understand it today.

The first record of orchids in the royal collection of plants appears in the Hortus Kewensis, compiled by John Hill, one of Lord Bute's prot6g6s, in 1768. Twenty-four species were recorded in cultivation at that time, all but two of them from European sources and mostly British natives. The two exotic species were Rhynchostylis retusa (recorded as Epidendrum retusum) and a species of Bletia (listed as Limodorum tuberosum).

When Princess Augusta died in 1772, George III amalgamated her estate with his own immediately adjacent garden, and asked the botanist Sir Joseph Banks for help in directing the gardens in a scientific manner. Banks had his own estate nearby at Spring Grove, Isleworth, where he gardened and grew orchids and other exotic plants in a series of glasshouses. Under his influence many improvements were made at Kew, and plants were added to the collections from many different parts of the world. It was Banks who persuaded the government of the day in 1772 to send Kew's first official collector, Francis Masson, to collect plants in the Cape of Good Hope.

With the help of Banks and his librarian, Jonas Dryander, William Aiton published his Hortus Kewensis in three volumes in 1789. Until then the records of plants coming into the gardens and surviving in cultivation were somewhat haphazard. The third volume contains a list of the orchids grown at that time, of which there were more than 40 species. The volume is illustrated by a life﷓size, fold﷓out, colored drawing
by James Sowerby of Phaius tankervilleae, the first tropical orchid to flower in the glasshouses at Kew. It had been introduced from China by Dr John Fothergill in 1778. This plant is of particular interest because the flowers were dissected, in 1801 and 1802, by Francis Bauer who was resident draughtsman at the Royal Botanic Gardens for 50 years. Not only did Bauer make some of the first drawings of plant cells, magnified 200 times, from the stigmatic surface of this orchid, but he also discovered and illustrated the nucleus of the cell, the first description of which was published by Robert Brown in 1833.

Other plants from distant parts recorded by Aiton included Satyrium carneum and S. bicorne (both recorded under the generic name Orchis) and Bartholina burmanniana (recorded as Arethusa ciliaris), all sent home as dormant tubers from the Cape by Masson in 1787. Several species from the West Indies had also been introduced recently, including two species of Encyclia - Encyclia cochleata and Encyclia fragrans (as species of Epidendrum). In 1782, the latter was the first epiphyte to flower in cultivation at Kew. The earliest record of all appears to be Bletia purpurea (as Limodorum altum) which Aiton records as having been introduced before 1733. This was probably the same introduction as plants 5ent to Philip Miller at Chelsea by Dr. William Houston from Jamaica. By the time the second edition of this Hortus Kewensis and a new catalogue were published in 1813, by Aiton's son and successor, William Townsend Aiton, the list of orchids cultivated at Kew had expanded to 48 genera and 115 species, of which 84 were exotics.

Of particular interest were several species brought back by Bligh in 1793 in HMS Providence, including Dendrobium linguiforme from Australia, Oncidium altissimum from the West Indies and 0ncidium triquetrum from Jamaica. Dendrobium speciosum, from Australia, Brassia maculata from Jamaica and Aerides odorata from China were donated by Banks from his own collection. Several of the orchids, including the last mentioned, were recorded as not having flowered since their introduction, and it must be doubtful if some of them ever did so under the cultural conditions in use at that time.

The only 'trade' collection in those early days was that of Messrs Loddiges of Hackney. They contributed plants from the nursery to the royal collections, sending Cymbidium aloifolium in 1789 and Oncidium bifolium in 1811 and no doubt many others which did not long survive. They produced a list in 1825 which offered 84 species in 31 genera.
Australian orchids were added to the collections from a variety of sources. Captain Flinders' expedition to survey the coast of New Holland was accompanied by the botanist Robert Brown and a young gardener, Peter Good, who acted as his assistant and seed collector. In 1803 about a hundred different species came into the collection when the ship returned to England.
A considerable number of orchids were collected by George Caley, Joseph Banks's collector, in the area around what is now Sydney and in the Blue Mountains. Several of his additions were listed in 1813 though most had not yet flowered. Pterostylis obtusa and Caladenia alba appear to have flowered regularly in July and August.

Allan Cunningham, also a Banks protege, was another botanical collector who landed in Sydney in 1816 and spent 16 years in Australia, sending a number of plant collections to Kew during that period. In 1823 a number of Australian species of Dendrobium were received from him, and between 1823 and 1828 he sent about 40 species of tuberous-rooted terrestrials. His collection of Pterostylis concinna, a species first discovered and described by Robert Brown in the vicinity of Port Jackson (later Sydney) was introduced to Kew in 1828, and illustrated many years later by William Hooker.

Most of the epiphytic orchids that came to Kew in the early days came from the West Indies. They were all listed as Epidendrum at first but a number of other genera, including Oncidium, Cyrtopodium, Lycaste and Brassavola were soon recognized. At first these epiphytes thrived, cultivated at high temperatures in the Great Stove, and propagated by division of the plants. But many of the species languished after producing their first flowers and one or two season's growth, and eventually died.

In the first decade of the 19th century, terrestrial and epiphytic orchids were sent to Kew from India by Dr William Roxburgh, Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden. Several of these survived for many years. John Smith, who was appointed as W T Aiton's assistant in 1822, described how he discovered Cymbidium aloifolium, Acampe praemorsa, Aerides odorata and others, together with Phaius tankervilleae and Bletilla striata (hyacinthina) from China, growing on a shelf above a flue against the back wall of the propagating house. The Aerides was growing and flowering freely, its roots clinging to the back wall. There were also flowering plants of Dendrobium aphyllum (D. pierardii) and D. cucullatum, which had been brought home by Francis Pierard, an Indian civil servant who retired to Kew.

In 1815, James Bowie and Allan Cunningham, again at Banks's behest, were sent to Brazil as botanical collectors for Kew and worked there for two years, dispatching collections of a variety of plants including epiphytic orchids. But when John Smith surveyed the collections in 1822 he found they were in a deplorable state, 'potted in common soil, the pots plunged to the rim in a tan bed, within a few feet of the glass roof, without being shaded from the summer sun, the hothouse being heated by a common flue producing dry heat not conducive to epiphytal plants.'

Between 1823 and 1825 a considerable number of species were received from Trinidad, sent by David Lockhart, who had become Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens there in 1818. Among these were the first plants seen in England of Stanhopea insignis, Psychopsis papilio (as Oncidium), Catasetum tridentatum, Lockhartia elegans, and others. Many were sent still attached to the branches of trees on which they grew naturally and were accompanied by suggestions from Lockhart as to how they should be treated in the glasshouse. These suggestions provided the information that was needed, and at last epiphytic orchids began to be grown successfully.

Introduction The First Records Orchid Houses at Kew Specialist growers Hybridizing Early Research The Present Day

Building up the Collection

Up until about 1830, orchids were looked upon merely as curiosities, suitable for cultivation in botanic gardens and by a few amateur plant lovers. But at about this time a number of very showy orchids were imported and flowered for the first time in cultivation. The Royal Horticultural Society had a glasshouse set apart especially for their cultivation in their garden at Chiswick not far from Kew, and at this point orchids rapidly became favorites at horticultural shows, with large 'specimen' plants being prepared for competition. The splendid Cattleyas, in particular, had brought epiphytic orchids into special favor with several growers. One of these was William Hooker, who maintained a small collection of orchids at his home in Suffolk before he became Professor of Botany in Glasgow in 1820. Indeed, it seems likely that the type species, Cattleya labiata, flowered first in this country in his collection in 1818. Soon after his appointment as the first Director of Kew in 1841, William Hooker decided that the orchid collection should be greatly increased. Though the showy species were welcome, he was particularly concerned that other less showy members of the family should be represented. Accordingly, Messrs Loddiges agreed to supply 200 of the least showy and low-priced orchids in their list for a total of 50 pounds.
The new Director also encouraged exchanges of plants with amateurs and other gardens and accepted presentations from wealthy growers who wished to dispose of their collections. The 6th Duke of Bedford gave his entire collection to Queen Victoria, who resented it to the Royal Botanic Gardens in 1844, and I S46 Kew received its first bequest - the orchid collection of the late Reverend John Clowes of Manchester was so extensive that a new house had to be built at Kew to accommodate it.
One of Hooker's correspondents was J C Lyons, who remarkably successful in growing orchids at his home at Ladiston in Ireland. His Remarks on the Management of Orchidaceous Plants, printed and published by himself in 1843, was the first manual on orchid cultivation. His comments on temperature, humidity, fresh air and misting newly acquired plants in the glasshouse also made a great difference to the ay orchids were cultivated at Kew and elsewhere.

In 1849 Lyons contributed notes on cultivation to Hooker's A Century of Orchidaceous Plants. This was a compilation of plates which had already been published in Curtis's Botanical Magazine, and many of the plants illustrated had come to Kew from Mexico and Brazil via the Duke of Bedford's collection at Woburn. A Mexican species which came direct to Kew from Oaxaca, where it was collected by Robert Smith, was Encyclia (Epidendrum) vitellina, which flowered first in 1843. The remarkable South African species Bonatea speciosa also figured in this publication with the comment that it was 'more easily cultivated than most terrestrial Orchidaceae. It flourished at Kew for many years in a small tub of peat mould, kept moist and in the greenhouse, and produces its blossoms annually in spring'.
John Smith, who came to Kew in 1822 and was made Aiton's chief assistant in 1826, became Curator under Sir William Hooker and continued until 1864. Although his main interest was in ferns, he had a wide knowledge of plants and their cultivation. In 1848 the orchids recorded numbered 755 species, but soon after there were a number of setbacks. New housing proved unsatisfactory, and several inexperienced growers and poor facilities wreaked havoc among the surviving plants.

However, in the early 1860s, Cattleyas, Dendrobiums and oncidiums again became good specimens and many of the prettier examples of the smaller kinds of orchids were replaced with fresh collections.
Orchids were very much encouraged by Joseph Dalton Hooker, who succeeded his father as Director in 1865. They were among his favorite plants and, as editor of' Curtis's Botanical Magazine for nearly 40 years, he was responsible for publishing many new descriptions. He began to delegate the authorship of the texts, however, and James Bateman, who is better known for his color plate work A Monograph of Odontoglossum and the elephant folio, The Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala, wrote the texts accompanying the plates of new orchids from 1864﷓6. During this period, additions continued to be made in the gardens, and in 1872 there is a record of some 851 species belonging to 138 genera.

In 1885, at the first Orchid Conference organized in Westminster by the Royal Horticultural Society, Sir Joseph Hooker greatly admired the many exotic plants on show and was able to contribute a number of species from the Kew collections. One of these was Anguloa clowesii, a plant which commemorated the late Reverend John Clowes. There were fine and well cultivated specimens of the white form of Cattleya skinneri and of Caularthron bicornutum with its white and purple﷓spotted flowers. Bulbophyllum fimbriatum (as Cirrhopetalum) had several whorls of purplish flowers and there was a splendidly grown plant of Phalaenopsis parishii. Among the. plants of chiefly botanical interest were Stelis muscifera with small dark red flowers, Physosiphon tubatus with long spikes of pale orange flowers, Panisea uniflora, described as 'a humble, inconspicuous species with solitary dull ochreous flowers’, and Eria excavata -'not a conspicuous' member of the genus.

Catasetum saccatum was one of the tropical orchids at Kew whose pollination mechanism was studied by Charles Darwin.

Other Kew plants which, attracted notice were the yellow﷓flowered Polystachya pubescens from South Africa, and two terrestrial species, Serapias parviflora from Italy and Ponthieva maculata from Mexico. In his opening speech, however, the President, Sir Trevor Lawrence regretted that, 'mainly owing to the excessive economy with which money is given to that very valuable institution, there is no sufficiently representative collection of orchids there at present.' He made a plea for wealthy bachelors, and others, to leave their plants to Kew' in order to enhance this public collection'.    Spurred on by this criticism, the collection and its cultivation continued to improve. Several establishments and individuals were particularly generous, especially the Royal Botanic Garden at Glasnevin, the orchid firm of Frederick Sander, and Sir Trevor Lawrence himself. By 1891 a list published in the Kew Bulletin recorded 766 different orchids that had flowered at Kew the previous year, and some 1,800 species in 200 genera were listed in the first Handlist of Orchids cultivated in the Royal Botanic Gardens in 1896.

Introduction The First Records    Building up the Collection    Specialist growers Hybridizing Early Research The Present Day

Orchid Houses at Kew

The earliest tropical orchids were grown at Kew in the Great Stove which was, in its day, the largest hot-house in Britain. It was a lean﷓to glasshouse, 34.7 m long, designed by William Chambers for Princess Augusta and erected in 1761. A wide variety of tropical plants was housed in it and several smaller houses were gradually added nearby for specialized collections. In 1836 a glasshouse was set aside for tropical orchids for the first time. A few years later another house was added which in 1846 Sir William Hooker described as 'occupied with a rich and inestimable collection of orchideous plants ... the centre is filled with a handsome slate staging, so large as to admit of a raised walk through the centre, thus enabling the visitor to look down upon each side of the house, while, over his head and from the rafters on either hand, are suspended wire baskets filled with beautiful tropical epiphytes ... As the house in question opens on to another and cooler stove, we are enabled to remove the splendid epiphytes, when in blossom, to a less heated atmosphere, and thus preserve them in beauty for a much longer time.'
Many of the orchids, however, did not thrive in this large house, especially the smaller ones, and they were moved to several smaller houses known as the orchid pits.

A group of houses called the New Range, and known later as the T﷓range, was built in 1868﷓9 on the site of some of these small houses. There were eventually several display houses for orchids and other growing and propagating houses within this group. Timber framed glasshouses need considerable renovation at intervals of 30 to 40 years and this took place regularly. Sir Joseph Hooker's successor, William Thiselton﷓Dyer, was able to write in 1904 that the Kew collection has much improved in health since the reconstruction in 1898 of the houses accessible to the public. These were originally erected in 1868 and were 13 feet high. They have now been reduced to 9 feet. This has the double advantage of bringing the plants more closely to the light as well as to the eyes of visitors. The conditions have also been divided into four compartments, the conditions of which vary in regard to temperature and atmospheric moisture. In 1901 a small pit was adapted for the cultivation of Dendrobiums.'
In the 1970s the orchids were moved to the Lower Nursery, where the large collection is now housed, and only a small display was maintained in the T﷓range. In 1983 this was partly demolished to make space for the construction of the new Princess of Wales Conservatory for tropical herbaceous plants. Finally the remainder of the T﷓range, adjacent ferneries and other old buildings in the tropical complex were demolished. The new Conservatory, opened in 1987, contains orchids in two display areas with different temperature regimes, and these have been described in chapter 1.

Introduction The First Records   Building up the Collection Orchid Houses at Kew    Hybridizing Early Research The Present Day

Specialist growers

It was during the directorship of Joseph Hooker that orchid growing became popular and prolific throughout Europe and at Kew. A series of specialist orchid growers greatly improved the cultivation of the plants and wrote about their experiences to help other growers.
One of the first of the gardening staff to become particularly knowledgeable about orchid growing was F W T Burbidge, who later became famous for his plant collecting in Borneo and his illustrations of plants. Employed at Kew until 1870, he produced Cool Orchids and how to Grow Them in 1874, and in 1885 wrote a detailed report on the plants exhibited at the first Orchid Conference held by the Royal Horticultural Society.

Robert Allen Rolfe, who founded The Orchid Review in 1893, started work in the gardens in 1879, but transferred to the Herbarium the following year. It was not long before Sir Joseph Hooker advised him to make orchids his specialty, and he was employed as Kew's first orchid taxonomist for forty years (see chapter 12).

William Watson also came to Kew as a gardener in 1879, but was concerned with living plants for much longer, becoming Assistant Curator in 1886 and Curator from 1901﷓22. Watson was instrumental in the revival of Kew as a horticultural, as distinct from a botanical, establishment. He was joined, in 1883, by William Jackson Bean, who became Assistant Curator in 1900 and eventually succeeded Watson as Curator in 1922. Together they produced a major publication on orchid growing, Orchids: Their Culture and Management in 1890.

Charles Henry Curtis is another famous name associated with orchids. He joined Kew in 1889, moving to the Royal Horticultural Society's garden at Chiswick in 1890. Throughout his long career as a horticulturist and journalist he had a special interest in orchids, writing several books, including Orchids for Everyone in 1910, and Orchids, Their Distribution and Cultivation in 1950. He took over the editorship of The Orchid Review from 1933 to 1958.

Introduction The First Records   Building up the Collection Orchid Houses at Kew Specialist growers Hybridizing    The Present Day

Early Research

The living collection of orchids at Kew and the specimens preserved in the herbarium have always been made available to botanists for research. Some of the earliest and most famous of studies which utilized the collections were those of Charles Darwin. His interest had been captured by orchids growing near his home in 1838 or 1839, and his studies of the flower structure and pollination mechanisms of orchids began with the species which grew along the Orchis Bank in the Cudham valley, in Kent.

Having studied 15 genera of native orchids, he set out to compare them with some of the tropical genera which were coming into flower in various collections at that time, notably at Kew. He borrowed plants and kept them in a small glass lean-to behind the kitchen of his home, Down House, until the flowers opened, becoming particularly fascinated by the genus Catasetum because of its unusual mechanism for releasing the pollinia. Watching and describing the catapult action that several of the species displayed gave him great pleasure. At one point he wrote to
Hooker: 'If you can really spare another Catasetum, when nearly ready, I shall be most grateful. Had I not better send for it? ... A cursed insect or something let my last flower off last night.' In another letter he wrote: 'I carefully described to Huxley the shooting out of the pollinia in Catasetum, and received for an answer "Do you really think I can believe all that?" '

Other features of Catasetum and its allies were also of great interest, in particular because of their peculiar flower structure and the fact that some plants never set fruit while others did so prolifically. Then Sir Robert ﷓Schomburgk described how he had found the flowers of three different genera on the same plant! Darwin's patient studies and dissections of fresh and preserved flowers revealed that the Catasetum flowers were male, while plants known as Monacanthus were the female form m of the same species, and the similar Myanthus were hermaphrodite but sterile. Thus pollination studies came to the aid of taxonomy, and two genera were sunk into synonymy.

These and other studies of some 50 genera of tropical orchids provided the basis for Darwin's book The Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilized by Insects, first published in 1862. It has been a source of reference for pollination studies ever-since.
In 1880 Ernst Pfitzer came to Kew from the University of Heidelberg to study the collection of orchids. Material was made available to him over a period of several years and resulted in various important publications on orchid morphology and classification which are still consulted. He was one of the first in a long line of distinguished botanists from other countries who made use of the plants at Kew, especially their flowers.

Introduction The First Records   Building up the Collection Orchid Houses at Kew Specialist growers Early Research The Present Day

Hybridizing

Robert Rolfe wrote a fascinating series of articles in the first volume of The Orchid Review in order to record the early days of orchid hybridizing, a subject that was Of great interest to his readers in 1893. Even at that time, he wrote, 'hybrid orchids occupy a very important place in modern collections'. This statement is even more relevant and true today - except at Kew, where the emphasis has always been on species, formerly of known wild origin, now increasingly raised from seeds in the laboratory, though some hybrids of natural origin, or historic interest, or raised for experimental reasons, are still maintained.

At the time interest in hybridization first began, however, everyone - even the growers at Kew - was trying out the possibilities with a wide range of orchids. In 1909 Rolfe and C H Hurst published The Orchid Stud﷓book, a companion volume to The Orchid Review, in which they recorded details of all the hybrids they could trace up to 1907 together with a great deal of supplementary information.

It was in about 1852 that John Dominy, a grower at the Veitch nursery in Exeter, first began to make experiments, acting on the suggestion of a local surgeon, John Harris. Although his first experiments were with the genus Cattleya, it was actually a Calanthe hybrid which flowered first, in 1856, and was described by John Lindley in The Gardeners Chronicle in 1858. There seems to have been an unusually long delay between its first appearance and its description, perhaps related to the realization by Lindley of the enormous possibilities for the future that this hybrid heralded. His first reaction, when Veitch showed him the plant, was to remark, 'Why, you will drive the botanists mad!'

Many different genera were experimented with, and new hybrids followed at a dramatic rate, with each one being carefully recorded and described. The first Cattleya hybrid was exhibited in 1859, the first Laelia in 1864, and the first Paphiopedilum (Cypripedium) in 1869. Dominy's list of named hybrids eventually grew to 25, the last one flowering in 1878. In the meantime, however, several other hybridizers had entered the field and a wide range of orchid genera and species were providing the basis for their experiments, provoking the botanist H C Reichenbach to comment that every orchid grower in Britain was 'engaged in the production of mules'.

The first new artificial hybrid produced at Kew appears to have been Disa Kewensis (D. uniflora X D. tripetaloides) which flowered first in May 1893, which set a new record for speed of development of seedling and flowering after hand pollination. The seed was sown in November 1891, and the plants thus reached maturity in 18 months. This was only the second Disa hybrid known at the time, D. Veitchii (D. uniflora X D. racemosa) having flowered in Veitch's nursery at Chelsea in 1891, a new genus to be added to the expanding list of hybrids.

Two other Disa crosses were made and their seeds sown at the same time as the D. Kewensis. The seedlings grew strongly and flowered later, D. Langleyensis (D. racemosa x D. tripetaloides) in 1894, and D. Premier (D. tripetaloides X D. Veitchii) in October 1893. The latter was duly awarded a First Class Certificate from the Royal Horticultural Society at its October show and is of particular interest because one of its parents was itself a hybrid. Another second generation hybrid flowered in 1900, and the name D. Watson was suggested for the cross (D. Kewensis X D. uniflora) by Rolfe in honor of the Assistant Curator responsible for the orchids at Kew, William Watson

Rolfe recorded the flowering at Kew of artificial hybrids in two other genera of terrestrial orchids in The Orchid Review of 1903. Spathoglottis Kewensis (S. placata X S. vieillardii) and Cynorkis Kewensis (C. lowiana X C. purpurata) were noted for their hybrid vigor and were intermediate in character between the parents in size and form of the plants and flowers. In both hybrids the seeds matured quickly and the seedlings flowered in about two years from the date the cross was made.

It was in January of the same year that Rolfe recorded Epidendrum Kewense (E. xanthinum X E. evectum, now known as E. elongatum) flowering in the glasshouses at Kew. The parents have bright yellow and purple flowers respectively, and in the hybrids all the flowers were buff or salmon mottled with purple. The hybrid was self-pollinated in 1902 in the hope that, if fertile, some progeny similar to the parents might result, thus testing the validity of Mendel's theory with respect to orchids. This cross failed, but Rolfe was successful in back-crossing E. Kewense with each of its parents and in predicting the flower color in the progeny of these crosses. Later, when the plant was stronger, he was successful in self-pollinating E. Kewense, and several seedlings were watched with great interest as their flower color became visible, some intermediate, and others more nearly resembling one or other of the parents. The considerable excitement that the developing flowers of the different plants evoked is apparent from the monthly updates in The Orchid Review throughout 1909.

Introduction The First Records Building up the Collection Orchid Houses at Kew Specialist growers Hybridizing Early Research

The Present Day

When the most recent Handlist of orchids at Kew was published, in 1961, it recorded 262 genera and over 1,800 taxa in the collection. Since then the number of species has more than doubled and they are listed in a new catalogue, published in 1990. Records are now computerized and as much information as possible is recorded for each accession.

Orchid growers are often criticized by conservation﷓ for the length (or brevity) of the life of orchid plants in cultivation. The detailed information held in the computer indicates that there is little basis for this criticism. Despite the hazards of suffragettes, seawater, power failure, and the problems imposed by two World Wars, there are 24 accessions remaining and flourishing since the first decade of the present century. The same individual plants of more than 130 species have beep cultivated at Kew for more than 50 years and a further 500 have been in cultivation for at least 20 years. Divisions of many of these have been shared with other establishments during this time.

Herbarium and laboratory studies by staff and visitors have greatly increased, and the plants are called upon more and more for research as well as for display to the public. There are also increasing numbers of requests for seeds from specialists who want to propagate some of the rarer species not available elsewhere. Whenever possible these demands are met, though sometimes there is a long delay before the plants flower and can be artificially pollinated.

Genera of horticultural interest, including Pleione, Paphiopedilum, Cymbidium, Cypripedium and several sections of Dendrobium, have been studied monographically. These studies have been accompanied by new acquisitions from many sources of a great variety of these attractively flowered plants. Once the research has been completed, they are used increasingly for decoration, both as plants and as cut flowers.

One of the most esoteric uses of the collection, and one of the most delightful, is the painting or photographing of plants and flowers for books and journals. The majority of the orchids illustrated in Curtis's Botanical Magazine and its successor, since 1984, The Kew Magazine, are from the Kew collection, while The Orchid Review continues to portray Kew orchids on a regular basis. In addition, postage stamps, postcards, greeting cards and calendars have all been illustrated with pictures of plants kept at Kew.

Growing the orchids at Kew today is more demanding than it has ever been. Full details of the houses, techniques and plants are given in the chapters that follow.

Read the book further.. Introduction (read from the top)

<< Orchids at Kew and Wakehurst Place Growing orchids at Kew>>