TRbooora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 24. March, 1922. No. 279. 
NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND ORCHIDS,—II. 
THE MYCORRHIZA OF GOODYERA PUBESCENS. 
OAKES AMES. 
(Plates 135 and 136.) 
IN a recent paper, entitled Nonsymbiotic germination of Orchid 
Seeds, Lewis Knudson! has published the results of experiments in 
which he successfully raised seedlings of Cattleya and Laelia on media 
from which fungi had been excluded. He proved conclusively that 
germination of the orchid seeds selected for investigation is not de- 
pendent on the invasion of the embryo by a supposedly symbiotic 
fungal organism, if assimilable food is available. He concluded 
that germination is a matter of nutrition. It is not necessarily in- 
duced by the activities of a fungus. In summing up the results of 
his experiments he states that the necessity of a fungus for bringing ` 
about germination has not yet been conclusively proved, but he does 
not touch on conditions that seem to be normal among orchids under 
natural surroundings; in other words, he does not tell us whether 
germination is possible under natural conditions if the fungus is ex- 
cluded, and this, it seems to me, is the focal point of the whole 
orchid mycorrhiza problem. 
Although highly interesting from the point of view of laboratory 
experiments and the possible economic application of the methods 
employed, it is worthy of note that Knudson's results do not help us 
to explain the conditions that prevail in nature; his results simply 
1 Bot. Gaz. lxxiii. (1922) 1. 
