i8Si.] NOTES. 437 



position ; and its ivory bracts are very useful for cutting during 

 tlie winter months, apart from the interest of the growing plants 

 themselves. 



We grow a batch of Aponogeton tubers every year in this way, and 

 find they give a very welcome supply of fragrant spikes. In May we 

 empty off the water, and set the pans and tubs in the sun all summer. 

 In this way they are thoroughly rested, and when planted in October 

 start at once into growth, a crop of fresh green young leaves and 

 numerous spikes being the result. 



I often wonder why one of the finest of all the Vandas — V. teres — 

 is not more often seen in bloom in orchid-growing establishments. 

 For some time I thought that culture had something to do with its 

 blooming, but now I know that this is by no means the whole truth 

 of the matter. Leaving out of the question the pure- white variety — 

 as rare as a white elephant, only far more beautiful — there are three 

 other distinctly different varieties of what we know in gardens as 

 Vanda teres. First and best, V. teres Andersoni, with stout growths 

 and large richly-tinted blooms, a free-blooming plant. Then we have 

 a plant similar in habit, but the flowers are not better in size or colour 

 than the ordinary thin-habited and proverbially shy-flowering Vanda 

 teres. Its advantages are a more robust and vigorous habit of growth, 

 and it has no objection to flower once every year, usually bearing from 

 five to seven flowers on a spike. I now grow this form, and find it 

 most satisfactory, blooming every year without any of that special 

 treatment of " drying off"" which is so often recommended as a panacea 

 of non-flowering for the old thin-growing Vanda teres. 



When I was in Singapore I found Vanda teres was brought down 

 from Burmah in trading vessels and sold to the residents as a popular 

 hardy flower for their gardens. I need scarcely say that Singapore 

 possesses a tropical climate — a mean of 82°, I believe — so that all our 

 Crotons and Dracsenas and other stove shrubs from both hemispheres 

 grow there in the open borders and beds just like Phloxes and Del- 

 phiniums here in England. I was in the Botanical Gardens out at 

 Tanglin one day, and saw in the distance a mass of flowers dancing in 

 the hot wind. Seeing numerous stakes to the plants, and their lilac 

 flowers, they reminded me of a mass of Sweet Peas in a sheltered 

 home garden. "What is the pretty mass of lilac yonder T' I asked. 

 "Oh," replied the curator, "that is Vanda teres !" Planted out in the 

 ordinary red loam of the island, it grew up the stout stakes, adhering 

 by its numerous aerial roots as Sweet Peas or Vines cling by their 

 tendrils : there it was in glorious flower, masses of it seven feet in 

 height, and wide in proportion — a sight to delight any one who only 

 previously knew of Vanda teres as cramped in a pot, scorching and 

 starved under a glaring roof of glass. 



