From John Rogers 22 January 1862
16. Eversfield Place | St. Leonards. | Hastings
Jany. 22 1862
Dear Sir
I have never succeeded in growing Cycnoches.— & I do not recollect ever to have had Mormodes,1 but as this last is one of the aberrant forms of Catasetum, I suspect it follows its habits— You are doubtless aware that Myanthus & Catasetum are identical though totally unlike.—2 Twenty years & more ago, I flowered a most beautiful specimen of Myanthus barbatus.—two full spikes of flower, exactly like the plant represented in an early volume of Paxtons Mage.3
It was an imported plant from Demarara: & I was greatly delighted with it & prized it highly.— Judge of my dismay when the plant flowered the next year, & was a simple & pure Catasetum.—4 There could be no mistake for I had no other plant like it. & besides I watched my own plants then almost day by day.— The transmogrification of that genus is enough to shake my belief in all floral identity.— I regret that I made no drawings of either form—& I cannot recollect any thing definite about the structure of the anther.—
I am spending the winter here & have no access either to my books or my plants—
Soon after I last wrote to you,5 a Catasetum—which had escaped notice up in the roof of my Orchid house flowered, but with only 2 flowers & these had shed their pollen masses before I saw them—so that it was useless to send it to you.—
I wish we were nearer neighbours6 as I should have much pleasure in showing you any thing which I have, though my plants through neglect now of some years standing are not what they once were—
Believe me, Dear Sir | Faithfully yours | John Rogers
PS. | Tropical orchids are very capricious in their growth & often require some slightly peculiar treatment which it is very difficult to find out— One or two species will sometimes flourish, where all others languish, & a slight alteration in the construction of a house will sometimes cause failure where success had previously been uniform—
Footnotes
Bibliography
Collected papers: The collected papers of Charles Darwin. Edited by Paul H. Barrett. 2 vols. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 1977.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Orchids: On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilised by insects, and on the good effects of intercrossing. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1862.
‘Three sexual forms of Catasetum tridentatum’: On the three remarkable sexual forms of Catasetum tridentatum, an orchid in the possession of the Linnean Society. By Charles Darwin. [Read 3 April 1862.] Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society (Botany) 6 (1862): 151–7. [Collected papers 2: 63–70.]
Summary
Reports that the orchids Myanthus and Catasetum are identical.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-3407
- From
- John Rogers
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Hastings
- Source of text
- DAR 176.1: 194
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3407,” accessed on 19 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3407.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 10