20 COOL ORCHID GUOWING. 



the period of repose is reduced to a minimum, as they persist, . 

 if left to themselves, in growing and flowering all the year 

 round. More especially is this habit shown when the plants 

 are grown in a cool, airy, and moist atmosphere. Cattleyas 

 and some of their congeners, the Lcelias, exhibit the same 

 tendency to keep on making a perpetual growth, more 

 especially if supplied with air and moisture, added to a 

 moderately cool temperature of, say, 50 to 55 at night. Still 

 it must be allowed that a periodical season of repose is 

 more essential to insure the profuse production of flowers 

 on these plants than it is in the case of the Oncids and 

 Odontoglots before mentioned. There is, however, another 

 way of resting Orchids, and one which is apt to be over- 

 looked, though a fact of the greatest importance. Sickly 

 plants should on 110 account be allowed to produce flowers, it 

 being far more essential that they should be induced, as far as 

 possible, to produce leaves, pseudo-bulbs, and roots. Some of 

 the very finest Phalasnopsids in this country may be found at 

 places in which they are allowed to produce but one crop of 

 flowers annually, and even under this treatment their young 

 flower-spikes are judiciously thinned out, so as to leave the 

 one or two remaining to be of the finest quality. Fine plants 

 are often found in places where they cut nearly every flower- 

 spike as its blooms expand. As an illustration of this, I may 

 point to one of the finest collections of " cool Orchids" in 

 Europe, that of Mr. E. Salt, at Ferniehurst, near Leeds; 

 there scores of fine spikes are cut off the plants as soon as 

 their flowers fully expand. This systematic process of re- 

 moving the flowers relieves, or, in other words, rests the 

 plants operated on much more than is generally supposed. 

 It induces an energetic propensity for making fine and vigorous 

 growths, and well-ripened, plump, pseudo bulbs, and hence the 

 plants are far better able to produce an abundant crop of fine 



