I2 8 THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 



length " and that the leaves usually wither about the time the 

 plant blossoms, although Gray mentions a variety that does re- 

 tain its leaves, and this produces " greenish-cream colored flow- 

 ers " and occurs in dry ground. I once examined five spikes of 

 5. cernua containing forty-five blossoms, and but five of these 

 had lost their pollen-masses, while one had lost its pollen-mass 

 but retained its disc. Some plants of this species, domesti- 

 cated in England, years ago, bloomed from August to the mid- 

 dle of November, and were thought to grow and make offsets 

 more freely than most species belonging to the family. 



Sweet, in the British Flower Garden, enumerates a number 

 of American Orchids that were successfully grown in England 

 during the early part of the century (Liparis liliifolia was 

 naturalized as early as 1758), and is of the opinion that all 

 Orchids might be raised from seed by surrounding them with 

 " turfs of grass " for the young plants to attach themselves to 

 when the plants first vegetate, " as they appear to be all more or 

 less parasitic in a young state." Or, he would cover the ground 

 with moss, scatter the seeds over it, and with a watering-pot 

 wash them gently in. Species requiring a clayey soil he would 

 plant on a little " mount " made of chalk covered with sandy 

 loam mixed with powdered chalk. Stewart Murray, curator 

 of the Glasgow Botanical Garden, gives in the Transactions 

 of the Horticultural Society of London, 1826, a list of 26 North 

 American Orchids, Calypso borealis among them, and the follow- 

 ing account of his treatment of them. " I chose a well shel- 

 tered place, nearly the lowest in the garden, facing south, took 

 out the soil to the depth of 16 inches, set in a wooden frame, 

 2J^ feet high at the back, 15 inches in front, with movable 

 glass lights, and filled it to the ground level with a compost, ^ 

 leaf-mould, ^ turfy peat full of roots and stems, the remaining 

 third M sphagnum, y 2 sand, the whole well broken and mixed 

 but not riddled. Care was taken to keep the surface a little 

 higher for those requiring less moisture, like Cyp. arictimim, 



