Oh dear oh dear oh dear. The Indystar article Viateur cited: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070217/LIVING02/702170390/1084
made the preposterous statement "The first public viewing of the species in bloom was in 1851 at Crystal Palace in London." In the interests of accuracy, this species was blooming on public display in the Bogor Botanic Gardens from the early 1820's. And what about the plants that flowered in the wild a thousand (or more) years ago ? The concept of "private property" hadn't arrived in this part of the world, so those wild displays were definitely public. Caucasians might not have been around to admire them, but I'm sure the locals were. Bloody eurocentric thinking. Oh, and while we're on the subject, specimens of Grammatophyllum speciosum are in the record books as the heaviest known orchid, not the world's largest. The stems on this species only get to 3-4 metres long; I could cite several others that regularly grow longer than 20 metres. Chees, Peter O'Byrne _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
