ORCHIDS AND ORCHID HUNTERS. An Interview with Mr Frederick

Otago Witness, Issue 2202, 14 May 1896, Page 49

ORCHIDS AND ORCHID HUNTERS. An Interview with M r Frederick

■ Sander, thu Obchjd King. This' interview took plaoe ia the quaint littlejcity of St. Albans ; and, after tbe old cathedral, it may be truly said that the principal feature of the place is Mr Sander's incredibly, beautiful establishment, with its acres of glass houses. Mr. Sander started business in George street, -St. Albans. There was no packing of orchids in those days, and the eminent collector,' Benedict Hoezl, despatched tho plants to his- agent in' hundreds of thousands, loosely thrown into such receptacles as were bandy. Sander, on his part, had nowhere to keep them' except attics and cellars. The result of the transfer of the agency to Mr Sander was that E^ezl waa in a few years enabled to retire to Prague, in Bohemia, where at this day a statue will be found to the memory of the famous orchid hunter. "After Koezl's death," gaid Mr Sander, "two other orchid hunters asked rae to work with them ; and I built my first greenhouse with rcy own hands in 1873, my first patron and supporter being Lcrd Rothschild." la 1881 Mr Sander left George street, and laid the foundation of bis present gigantic business in another part of tbe queer little city of St. Albans. "At pre£ent," remarked the famous dealer, "I get consignments of orchids to the amount of from 15 to 100 cases weekly. The cases are about 3ft f quare, and are consigned by about 12 travellers whom I maintain in all the orchid-growing countries of the world — Mexico, Vemzuela (Sir Robert Schomburgk, of ' Sohomburgk Line ' fame, was himself a discoverer of orchids), Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Barmab, Borneo, New Guinea, Sco." "By the way," I interrupted, "it must be expensive to maintain these men ? " " The co&t of maintaining a single successful traveller," remarked Mr Sander, " sometimes amounts to £3000 a year. The averega, however, Is about £1800 for each man, and they do exactly as they like. My orchid hunters are trained here, and I send them to those conntries for which I consider they are beßt fitted — Frenchmen to Madagascar, Englishmen to India and Burmah, and Germans to German colonies " No, there is no oheck upon them ; it is entirely a matter of honour and integrity between my collectors and myself. A man is not blamed for failing to get even one orchid in the course of a year. Last season I lost £1200 on one man and £1000 on another." 11 How do they work ? " •«" From a base. A man collecting orchids on the lower slopes of the Himalayas will proceed direct to Calcutta, where he cashes his draft and engages his cattle and servants. On reaching tho forest, huts are erected, the collector's own being quite an elaborate place with a broad stage in front, on which the orchids are laid out separately, dsled»aQd^ajfiK<ifosth«ioam<jy. Aaj-cu.

know, most of the plants grow on trees, and thene have to be felled; if the collector attempted to climb i ma he would probably be stung to death by vcrious insects." " Are the trees felled in all cases 1 " "In moat instances; and it is computed that a fine forest tree is felled for every three acraps of Odontoglodsnm. Now, probably, you have some idea of the infinite labour involved in obtaining these exotics. But I have not finished yet. " When the orchids are brought $n it takes about four weeks to dry and prepare them j for the journey. Lst us suppose that the collector is hunting for orchids in Colombia, with Bogota as bis base. The -forest will probably lie 10 days' march from the lastnamed town. The orchids when collected and prepared are first of all conveyed by mules to Bogota, whence : they are transported in six ,days to Honda, on the > Magdalena River. From Honda it used to ba a raft voyage of 14 days to Savanilla, but at present a service of American flat-bottomed steamers covers the distance in seven days. The journey from Savanilla to Southampton takes 22 days. On arriving at Southampton the plants are placed in specially-heated trucks and conveyed direct to my own railway station at St. Albans. They are then potted in peat and sphagnum moss." " They are cleaned, of course, and Hold ? " " Yes ; no man. can say for certain whether an orchid plant as we receive it is worth. 2s 61 or £100.". And Mr .Snider estimates that he receives at least 1,000,000 orchids every yoar. Moat of these are sold by auction ; the record price for a single orchid being 3f>ogs. It h no wonder that orchids should be an expensive luxury. Ten thousand plants may be collected on a mountain or in a forest, packed with infinite care, and consigaed toHi gland, the freight, perhaps, ranging from £300 to £800 ; and yet, on reception, there may not ba a fiicgle plant alive, J Mr Sander tells ua that the difficulty of importing orchids from Ecuador and New Guinea is very great indeed. "I want you to take particular notice," said the eminent dealer to me, "of the splendid enthusiasm of the orchid-hunters ; and in this connection I will give you a few stories. " A resident of the German c jlony at Tovar, New Granada, sent a plant of the Ma&devallia j Tovarenßis to a friend in Manchester, who divided it ; each fragment brought a large sum, and the purchaser repeated the operation as fast as tbe morsel grew. la this way a conventional pric? was established — one guinea a leaf. I got on the track of this orobid, and commissio.ned a Mr Arnold to get some. 6a bis way out to Caracas he was accompanied by a young man'ostensibly representing a hardware firm. This young "commercial" qaettioned Arnold casually, and learnt all his plans ; but on arriving at Caracas my man knew that his travelling companion was himself a collector of orchids. Ono night Arnold went into a hotel where bis rival was at supper, placed a revolver on the table, and said he wanted a fight. The other. man slid under the table and thera made a compromise. In due time I received 40,000 • plaDte of- Masdevallla Tovareneis, which drove the -price, in a single month, from agniuea a leaf to a shilling. This gave all orchid lovers a'chance to acquire a beautiful species at; a low pried. " On another ocoasion, one of my collectors made a great fiud of orchids in a native graveyard. The glorious .flowers trailed amid human bone*. On learning his intentions, the natives grew truculent, but were bought over with brass wire. Not only did they allow him to disturb the bones of their ancestors, but they even helped him to stow his plunder. This included a human skull, out of the eyesockets of which one of the Dendrobeß was growing." , "I. suppose," I remarked, "that many orchid- hunters-perish whiLt pursuing their fascinating labours.? " " Unfortunately they do," was the reply. "Among the collectors who have died in harness I remember Falkenberg at Pauama, Ktabooh in Mexico, Endres on the Rio Hacha, Wallace ia Ecuador, Schroder in Sierra Leone, Arnold on the Orinoco, Digance in Brazil, and Brown in Madagascar. Talking of the last-named place, another eminent orchid-hunter, Mi Leon Humblot, tells how he once dined at Tamatave with his brother and six compatriots, who were exploring the country with various scientific aims. Within the year he was the- only sarvivor. One of these men travelled on b3half of Mr Cutler, the naturalist, of Bloomsbury street, searchiDg for butterflies and birds as well aa orchids. Unfortunately he chanced to shoot at a native idol; whereupon the priests soaked him with paraffin and burnt him alive on a table. 11 Then, again. Sir Trevor Lawrence speaks of a zealous orchid-hunter he knew, who waded for a fortnight up to his middle in mud, searching for a certain plant." " I suppose there is something interesting in the way in wbioh new varieties are discovered 1 " " Undoubtedly. A new variety turned up in the greenhouse of a Mrs Spicer, a lady living at Twickenham. She took it to an expert, who promptly*purcbased it for 70^8. The plant had been sent to Mrs Spicer by one of her sons, who owned a tea plantation in Assam. The moment this story got abroad a traveller was instantly despatched in search of the orchid, with instructions to ask for a job at Mr Spicer's buogalow in the meantime. That man, after having been nearly killed by a tiger, succeeded in driving down the price of this new variety to a guinea." "But take a case that concerns myself more directly. Among a laige number of Cypripedium insigne received at St. Albans on one occasion, I noticed one with a yellow flower stalk instead of a brown. This I put on one side. In due course the flower opened, and proved to be of a glorious golden colour. I had it cut in two, and sold half to a private customer, and the other half publicly for lOOgs. One of the purchasers divided his plant and sold two pieces at lOOgs each. Another piece," concluded Mr Sander," I myself bought back for 250gs, and this I kept for hybridising. In all the purchaser made a profit of £800." "You have tackled a big subject," the dealer went on. "On July 24, 1883, aMr Harvey, a solicitor of Liverpool, chanced to be strolling through his house, when he noticed & plant of. fccslia ancepa, with a ring *

mark on its pseudo bulb mnob higher up than was usual. He bought if for 2ga then and there,* and on December 1, 1888, he sold it back to me for £200." Mr Sander numbers am .ng bin customers not only dealers and orchid lovers throughout all tbe continents, but also Chinese and Siamese potentates, as well as Indian and Javanese Rajahg, whose coolies could gather the plants in thousands within a furlong of their own palaces. " I have said nothing about • lost orchid?,' " remarked Mr Sander, " but I must touch upon this romantic part of the subject. Some few years ago two orchid plants made their appearance at the Zoological Gardens, behind the house of Mr Bartletfc, tbe well-known superintendent. He sold them for a large Sum, but. no one knows how they got there. The orchids certainly arrived with some monkeys from South Amerioa, but we were all unable to' find put precisely when they arrived and from what distriob. " There is jast one little interesting point left," remarked Mr Sander, as we strolled back to the house from the great conservatory, "and that is the danger of unpacking the caßes. Ship rats jump out and bite ; and then there are scorpions and centipedes, stinging ants, monstrous spider?, and giant cookroaohes— all in the roots of orchids or amid the leaves — and once we found a snake 16ft long in one of the cases. I was more than glad to make a present of the reptile to Mr Butlett, and it is now io the Zoological Gardens."— Tit Bits.