Odontoglossum Crispum - Discovery and Introduction To Europe

Discovery and Introduction To Europe

O. crispum was discovered in 1841 by Karl Theodor Hartweg, in the high Andes Mountains, near Pacho in the department of Cundinamarca, Colombia, during one of his plant collecting expeditions for the Royal Horticultural Society. It was named "Crispum" by John Lindley, a reference to the crisped edges of the flower.

None of the plants shipped from the 1841 expedition survived the trip back to England, and it was not until 1863 that the plant first flowered in England, once growers had been able to re-create the cool natural habitat of these "alpine" plants. English growers had initially believed that the Colombian tropics were hot and steaming jungles and tried to grow the plant in the hot-houses favoured by Victorian horticulturists. It was not until growers found how to lower the temperature of their glasshouses, by running water on the outside of the glass panels and having water dripping in front of the open sides to cool down the air, that the plant was able to survive and flower in England.

As Orchid mania reached its height, several London orchid houses, including Rollisson of Tooting, Veitch of Chelsea, and Low of Clapton, sent out plant collectors to bring back samples of O. crispum. Amongst the Veitch collectors were David Bowman, who successfully located O. crispum "Alexandrae" in Colombia in 1867, Henry Chesterton who discovered the variety O. crispum "Chestertonii" (named after him) in the late 1870s, Guillermo Kalbreyer, who in June 1881 "sent home a collection of Orchids, consisting principally of O. crispum", and David Burke, who collected in Colombia from 1894 to 1896.

In his book, "About Orchids – A Chat" published in 1893, Frederick Boyle describes the "harvesting" of O. crispum from Colombia. The collector would make Bogotá his headquarters from where he would need to travel "about ten days to the southward" by mule. On reaching his destination, he would "hire a wood; that is, a track of mountain clothed more or less with timber" from a tribal chief. He would then hire "natives, twenty or fifty or a hundred, as circumstances advise" and set them to cut down all the trees. In the meantime, the collector would build "a wooden stage of sufficient length to bear the plunder expected" where he would clean, sort and dry the orchids. Each tree would produce between three and five usable specimens. He goes on to explain:

"It is a terribly wasteful process. If we estimate that a good tree has been felled for every three scraps of Odontoglossum which are now established in Europe, that will be no exaggeration. And for many years past they have been arriving by hundreds of thousands annually! But there is no alternative. A European cannot explore that green wilderness overhead; if he could, his accumulations would be so slow and costly as to raise the proceeds to an impossible figure. The natives will not climb, and they would tear the plants to bits. Timber has no value in those parts as yet, but the day approaches when Government must interfere."

O. crispum appears frequently in the illustrations of John Day in his scrapbooks – 40 times between 1865 and 1887. The species was highly sought after in Victorian times, both for the diversity of its flower colour and as a cool-growing species that could be successfully cultivated. By 1889, varieties were sold for more than 150 guineas at auction.