Cattleya labiata vera was, at one time, common in European greenhouses, but then one by one each mysteriously died until there was only a single plant left in all of western Europe. No nurseryman or plant hunter could remember where the flower had originally been found. Then the greenhouse with the sole surviving specimen burned down, incinerating the final domesticated Cattleya labiata vera. Hunters pined for it without luck for seventy years and finally more or less abandoned the search. One evening, seven decades after the last one had burned, a British diplomat spotted a woman at an
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