34 orchids: how to grow them successfully. 



I grant that a newly imported healthy plant of Cattleya or 

 Dendrobium, if wired to a block of wood or cork, will grow 

 well for a year, or perhaps two, but after that the plant is 

 found to dwindle away and become less by degrees. The reason 

 why Orchids fail with us, when trying to grow them in the manner 

 in wliich they luxuriate in their native countries, is obvious, when 

 we take into consideration hov/ utterly impossible it is for us, even 

 in the largest and most perfectly regulated establishments, to 

 create in an enclosed space of a fev»^ square yards, vv^hich has to be 

 heated artificially for more or less of nine months of the year, that 

 admirable, fresh, buoyant, and unifoi'm atmosphere v/hich exists 

 amongst their native mountains and in their forests and dells. We 

 may sometimes, during favourable weather and proper management, 

 partly succeed in doing this, but perhaps in the next hour, with lax 

 attention and a totally different temperature, there will be a greatly 

 altered state of affah-s. This varying and ever changing artificial 

 atmosphere — sometimes laden with moisture, at others dry and 

 harsh, with the temperature changing quickly from hot to cold — 

 undoubtedly occurs in a larger or smaller degree in every 

 establishment, and this is the chief reason why an Orchid does not 

 grow satisfactorily if all its roots are exposed to these sudden and 

 recurring changeable conditions, although it is natural for them to 

 perform their proper functions when exposed in their native 

 habitats. It is, therefore, necessary, when imder culture, that 

 the roots should have protection from these sudden changes of 

 temperature, and this is best done by growing them in pots or 

 baskets, in a suitable compost, as they thus escape the ill effects 

 of root exposure and can be kept in a more regular condition of 

 moisture, not saturated one day and extremely dry the next, as 

 is the case when they are fastened to blocks of wood. There is 

 also another reason, which I have no doubt has much to do with 

 this failure on blocks, which is, that with us the blocks of wood 

 have no life in them and contain no moisture whatever, whilst in 

 their native countries many of the Orchids grow on living trees. I 

 think it is a very rare experience with collectors abroad to find 

 them growing on trees which have been dead any considerable 

 time. 



There is a beautiful old Orchid, Cattleya citrina, which from 

 its peculiar drooping habit of growth cannot well be grown 

 in any way but on blocks-. Even if planted in a basket oi" 



