Details - Notes on orchid culture - Biodiversity Heritage Library

Notes on orchid culture

Title

Notes on orchid culture

Title Variants

Alternative: Orchid notes

By

Gosse, Philip Henry, 1810-1888

Hooker, Joseph Dalton, 1817-1911

Type

Collection

Material

Published material

Publication info

Notes

Bookplates of the Library of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, Boston, to whom Albert Cameron Burrage presented the ms. on June 28, 1931.

Mass. Horticultural Society. Dict. cat., | vol. 2, p. 135

Burrage, A. C. Cat., | p. 34

Manuscript notes by the English self-taught naturalist, Philip Henry Gosse, dated between 1861 and 1875, on the breeding and cultivation of orchids. Items entitled "Orchid notes", dated 1861-1871, consist of ca. 148 unbound leaves of letters, pencil sketches, and notes. The notes, many of which are written on the back of publication announcements, printer's waste, and scraps of personal letters, document Gosse's experiments cross-breeding different types of orchids, and include his tables recording orchid varieties, growing time, success in flowering, number of bulbs produced, and potting methods. He also made notes on the growers from whom he purchased certain plants. There are three letters to Gosse in Torquay, England, from Sir Joseph Hooker, botanist and director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, dated 1861-1867, containing detailed notes on orchid cultivation, as well as letters from Charles Leach [?], dated 1863-1864, and Edward Stanford, dated 1871. Papers are laid in the empty binding of volume 1 of "The floral world", with Gosse's own ms. label on front cover: "Gosse. Orchid notes", and printed label "449", possibly a Gosse shelf-mark. Accompanying the loose notes is a standard composition notebook, entitled simply "Orchids", containing 114 bound leaves, and 30 laid-in leaves, of additional notes by Gosse from 1863-1875.

Illinois State Library grant funding to digitize in 2015. The volumes were digitally imaged by the NEDCC Imaging Lab in compliance with FADGI specifications.