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Dear Colin and OGD's The Cigar orchid is the common name for Cyrtopodium punctatum. It is a giant sized terrestrial, epiphytic or lithophytic orchid with huge cigar shaped [fusiform] psuedobulbs and linear to elliptic-lanceolate, acute to acuminate, distichous, spreading or recurved leaves. It blooms in the late spring witha very long paniculate inflorecence [to 150 cm] and has a swarm of many flowers that also gives it another common name - The Bee-Swarm Orchid - for the flowers appearance of a giant swarm of bees. In olden times a paste [mucilage] was made from the pseudobulbs an adhesive composed of a solution of a sticky vegetable product or vegetable gum in water, used primarily to seal paper (e.g., postage stamps and envelope flaps]. This may have been why they carted them away by the wagonload in the article, not to have an orchid to grow. South Florida was a very unhospitible area to live in the 1800's and there was very little to do in the way of making money, so it may have been a local cash crop. |
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