A little old man sat last week in the 20th annual International Flower Show at Manhattan's Grand Central Palace, quietly watching record crowds mill around the long tables of orchid exhibits. He watched the orchids, bright and delicate, crumple slowly after four days in the crowd's breath. Now & then he eyed particularly a spray of big plum-striped orchids, a hybrid whose glazed hairy petals crumpled not at all. This extraordinary flower had equal upper & lower petals unlike most orchids, and attenuated side petals that fell like walrus mustaches. It was...
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