134 COOL ORCHID GROWING. 



varieties of this old plant, which vary slightly in the size and 

 colour of their flowers. 



Z. onaxillare. — This is another free blooming species, which 

 produces its flowers in the aiatunin, and lasts a long time in 

 beauty. Its bulbs are much smaller than the last, and the 

 leaves are shorter and narrower. Sepals and petals green, 

 marked with brown transverse bars and blotches ; lip white, 

 with a richly purple-stained base ; well-grown plants bear from 

 50 to 100 flowers at a time. This fine Zycopatalum will 

 grow in peat and sphagnum in a pot, or succeed well on a 

 block ; it either case it requires to be well watered when 

 growing. Edwin "Wrigley, Esq., of Bury, Lancashire, has in 

 his collection a remarkably fine plant of this species. In 1870 

 it had but seven bulbs when obtained, from which it made four 

 fine healthy growths. In 1871, it made nine strong breaks, 

 and in 1872 it made seventeen vigorous breaks, which col- 

 lectively have borne 147 flowers ! 



Hardy, or Half-hardy Lady's Slippers. 

 Originally it was not our intention to have alluded to hardy 

 herbaceous Orchids, but as the present genus is exceptionally 

 curious, and some of its species very beautiful, we may be 

 pardoned for slightly deviating from our premeditated design. 

 In Messrs. Backhouse's nursery, at York, two species at least of 

 these lovely plants flourish luxuriantly in the sheltered 

 recesses of their admirable rock garden. Cypripedium 

 Calceolus is there planted in loam and limestone with an 

 eastern aspect, sheltered from the western gales by a broad 

 mass of sandstone rock. Here I counted upwards of thirty fully 

 expanded flowers during one of my visits, all open at the same 

 time. Its still more beautiful congener, C. spectabile, grows 

 luxuriantly in peat and sand, and flowers freely. When grown 

 in pots, the*.pots should be plunged in spent tan or ashes, and 



