The amount of compost used should be reduced to the barest possible minimum; 
they should be planted in smaller pots or baskets and hung where they will get 
ample light and a warm, moist atmosphere. They can be watered copiously right 
through the growing period, a good soaking twice a day in the middle of Summer 
being not too much for them. This treatment may be continued until the flowers 
have opened. After flowering the watering must be diminished and in the Winter 
they can be kept quite dry except for an occasional spray on a bright morning to 
save wastage of the stems. 
The following are the best species: — 
LAELIA ALBIDA. Native of Mexico. 
A graceful species of the first, group with pyriform or oblong, more or less fur- 
rowed pseudobulbs, topped with one or more, often two, strap-shaped, pointed, 
leathery leaves about 6 inches long. The eighteen-inch scape carries half-a-dozen 
fragrant and graceful flowers up to 3 inches across. Sepals and petals white, deli- 
cately flushed with rose. Lip white to pale pink, marked with three yellow lines 
in the centre, the middle lobe being recurved. Flowers in late Autumn, the blooms 
lasting 3 to 4 weeks. 
This species will do best in a shallow basket or on a raft or block. 
Variety bella. Flowers flushed with rose, lip bright rose. 
Variety Marianae. Sepals and petals flesh to salmon pink. Lip mauve, striped with 
biscuit. 
Variety Stobertiana. Tips of sepals, petals and lip deep purple. 
Variety sulphurea. Flowers pale sulphur-yellow. 
LAELIA AMANDA. Native of Brazil. 
One of the first group. Pseudobulbs are thin and fusiform, light green and about 
7 inches tall, and are topped with a pair of wedge-shaped, leathery leaves about 8 
inches long and red beneath in the earlier stages. Flowers, on short stems and 
usually produced in pairs, are up to 6 inches in width. Sepals and petals light rosy 
pink, the lip being deep rose, veined with purple. Flowers in Autumn and lasts 
about a month. 
Syn. Cattleya Rothschildiana. 
LAELIA ANCEPS. Native of Mexico. 
Probably the most popular species and certainly the most varied of all the Laelias. 
Pseudobulbs up to about 5 inches in length, ovate and rather flattened, and sur- 
mounted by a solitary (occasionally two) broadly lanceolate, shining green leaf. 
Scapes, up to three feet tall, are flattened and jointed, and bear from 2 to 6 lovely 
flowers each about 4 inches across. In the type form the nearly equal sepals and 
petals are lanceolate, purplish-rose or rosy-lilac and funnel shaped, spathulate 
fronted lip is deep purple flushed with rose, the throat being yellow, streaked with 
purple. The fragrant flowers are produced in late Autumn to early Winter and last 
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