THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 289 



VARIEGATED LEAVED ORCHIDS. 



BY WILLIAM GEDNET, 

 Head Gardener to J. C. Day, Esq., Tottenham, N. 



{With Coloured Illustration of AncEctochilus xanthophyllui.) 



fRCHIDEOUS plants remarkable for the beauty of tbeir 

 leafage are not numerous, as compared with those grown 

 for the sake of their richly-coloured and extremely 

 beautiful flowers, yet these are more than sufficient to 

 form a very interesting and pleasing feature in a well- 

 appointed orchid house. There are now about thirty species and 

 varieties of Anrectochili, which is by far the most important genus, 

 comprising kinds with ornamental leafage, and these for the most 

 part are so exquisitely beautiful that it would be difficult to over- 

 praise them. It would, indeed, be more difficult to find words to 

 convey an adequate idea of the exquisite beauty of the golden and 

 silvery tracery with which the velvety surface of the leaves is over- 

 laid, and as Mr. Hibberd so truly says in a most valuable paper on 

 the Ansectochili, contributed to the Intellectual Observer, vol. viii., 

 page 461 — "No picture, no description, no perfervid expressions of 

 surprise, delight, or even of admiration, can convey an adequate idea 

 of the extraordinary beauty of these plants. . . . TJ.sually, the 

 leaf appears as if formed of the richest purple-green, or olive- 

 coloured velvet, or glossy satin or silk. Over this groundwork is 

 spread an elaborate reticulation of gold or silver threads, the vein- 

 ing of the leaf being marked out as distinctly as if wrought in real 

 metal, of the most cunning workmanship, and the gold has the 

 lustre of gold, and the velvet, the softness, the iridescence, and deli- 

 cacy of velvet ; and the whole thing is so wonderful that, though 

 we may have been familiar with the plants for years, we have never 

 yet become thoroughly convinced of their reality." Mr. Hibberd, 

 in thus speaking of them, has done no more than the barest act of 

 justice, and as a goodly collection may, with proper care and atten- 

 tion, be most successfully cultivated in a comparatively small space, 

 every amateur cultivator of orchids should have at least half-a-dozen 

 species in his collection. To say that they are easily grown, as some 

 writers have asserted, would be misleading, for to achieve success 

 great care is necessary, but there is no difficulty so great that it 

 cannot be surmounted by an amateur experienced in the cultivation 

 of orchidaceous plants. Failures in the cultivation of these plants 

 are by no means unknown, for although they thrive amazingly under 

 a proper system of culture, they quickly succumb to bad manage- 

 ment, and I shall probably be doing the greatest service to the 

 reader by pointing out the chief causes of failure. These, so far aa 

 my experience has been with them, are an excess of heat and 

 moisture, and a close stifling atmosphere. I would beg of my 

 readers to understand that although they are natives of Ceylon, 



October. ^^ 



