November i6, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



545 



until the flowering season is passed. Under this treatment 

 Mr. George IMacWilliam, of Whitinsville, Massachusetts, 

 has grown and exhibited in Boston, perhaps, the finest 

 D. formosum ever seen in cultivation, and this fact appears 

 to be due to the long rest given in the cooler temperature. 

 D. formosum is an exceedingly ornamental plant when in 

 bloom, as the foliage of the past and present year is often 

 retained on the plants as a set-off to the large pure white 

 flowers, which are sometimes four inches in diameter, the 

 Up having a conspicuous yellow blotch, varying in some 

 plants from bright orange to pale lemon-yellow. The 

 flovi^ers are very durable, lasting several weeks in perfec- 

 tion. As the plants seem to grow best when suspended 

 from the roof of the house, basket-culture or perforated 

 pans seems the best treatment for them, as the roots like to 

 ramble, and seem to resent confinement in pots. I have 

 seen it stated that wood-lice do not feed on living roots of 

 Orchids, being content to live on decayed portions, but I 

 am satisfied that they are very partial to the roots of this 

 Dendrobium, and for this reason the plants are often 

 plunged in water a few minutes to drive out the wood-lice, 

 when they are easily caught. It should be stated that this 

 species flowers with the completion of growth, hence the 

 rest is given after the flowering period, while in the ma- 

 jority of Dendrobiums the resting season precedes the 

 flowering time. The statement of some eminent authori- 

 ties that horticulture is necessarily an empirical art, seems 

 to be supported by the fact that it takes a temperature of 

 no degrees to rest this plant in Burmah, while we can ac- 

 complish the same result by reducing the temperature 

 twenty degrees from normal, while we could not imitate 

 the conditions noted under which the plant grew at home. 



South Lancaster, Mass. (7. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



Phal^nopsis Culture. — I recently visited the garden of 

 Mr. Wigan at East Sheen, near Richmond Park, a garden 

 famous for some classes of Orchids, and particularly for 

 Phalsenopsis, which are grown exceptionally well there. 

 Mr. Young, the grower, kindly furnished me with some 

 details of the treatment he finds most suitable for these 

 plants, and these may be useful to others. The Phalae- 

 nopsis-house at East Sheen is twenty-five feet by fourteen 

 feet, with a low-span roof, and it stands on the north side 

 of a high wall, so high as to completely shade the house 

 from sunshine all winter. The house has bottom venti- 

 lators only, water-tanks below the stages, which are planted 

 with Fittonias and similar low-growing foliage-plants. The 

 paths are formed of grayel, which Mr. Young believes in 

 keeping forked quite loose. The Phaleenopsis are all sus- 

 pended from the roof. They are planted in teak baskets, 

 small in comparison with the size of the plants, and they 

 are partly filled with potsherds, partly with sphagnum. 

 Mr. Young does not use any charcoal, and he uses suffi- 

 cient sphagnum only to hold the moisture about the roots 

 of the plants in hot weather. They are all carefully re- 

 planted in May, when they are allowed to get dry, and 

 then all the old moss is washed out with the aid of a 

 syringe and replaced with new. The plants are not trans- 

 ferred to larger or new baskets unless it is quite necessary. 

 During summer they are kept moist, almost saturated at 

 the roots, and in hot weather the foliage is slightly dewed 

 over with the syringe. The atmosphere is kept at satura- 

 tion point, and the temperature at from seventy to eighty- 

 five degrees. -In winter less water is given ; only when 

 the moss about the plants is dry are they watered. Mr. 

 Young dips the plants overhead in a bucket of water to 

 water them. In winter the temperature is allowed to fall 

 to sixty degrees at night and sixty-five degrees by day, ex- 

 cept when the weather is mild, when the temperature is 

 kept about five degrees higher. There are about 300 plants 

 of Phalsenopsis in this house, some of them being very fine 



specimens with leaves a foot long. Almost every one of 

 the best of the species and hybrids is represented, while of 

 such kinds as P. Schilleriana, P. grandiflora and P. Stuartiana 

 there are many fine plants. The effect produced by these 

 Phaleenopsis when in flower in January is a most beautiful 

 one. To grow them well one requires much patience and 

 proper conveniences, which are not of the most inexpen- 

 sive kind ; I think I must add also the element of luck as 

 having something to do with success. But when they do 

 behave themselves Phala-nopsis fully repay all the trouble 

 taken with them. A great deal appears to depend upon 

 the position and shape of the house. If one can only find 

 the house that suits Phalsenopsis their cultivation then pre- 

 sents no exceptional difficulties. 



Cattleya labiata (Warocquena). — This grand Orchid is 

 the glory of the Orchid-house in October. It is the princi- 

 pal attraction one meets with in Orchid collections in 

 England, a gratifying circumstance, seeing how rare and 

 coveted this plant was before it was discovered in such 

 abundance by the great English and Belgian Orchid col- 

 lectors. It is good-natured under cultivation even for a 

 Cattleya, and it appears to flower at least as profusely as 

 the best of them. Where it cost guineas a year or two ago 

 it scarcely costs shillings now. At a London auction sale 

 this week I saw fine healthy plants, with a dozen or more 

 pseudo-bulbs and in most cases bearing several flower- 

 sheaths, sold for from eight to fifteen shillings each. A 

 large box of cut flowers of this Orchid, shown by Messrs. 



F. Sander & Co., gave buyers an opportunity of seeing the 

 character of the plant. It ought certainly to rank among 

 the twelve best garden Orchids. One meets with so many 

 frauds in the shape of Orchids — I mean in their having 

 good looks coupled with a very bad character in the gar- 

 den — that it is a genuine pleasure to find one to which too 

 much praise cannot well be given. 



Cattleya Alexandr^e. — Of this I am a little suspicious, a 

 plant of it having flowered lately at Kew — the first to 

 flower anyv^'here, I believe. It is one of the C. guttata 

 class, and, judged by the plant flowered here, one of the 

 worst of them. The flower is three inches across, like that 

 of C. guttata, var. Leopoldii, the sepals and petals dull 

 greenish brown with a few reddish blotches, and thelabel- 

 lum rosy mauve. Of course, the Kew plant may be the 

 worst possible variety, and the collector who pictured and 

 described this discovery as a many-flowered beauty may 

 not have seen anything so poor as the first flower that has 

 opened in England. We hope not. 



Gladiolus oppositiflorus. — The re-introduction of this 

 plant.which has lately been sent from the Cape to Kew, where 

 it is now in flower, will, we hope, enable those who are in- 

 terested in the history of garden Gladioli to decide soon a 

 question which has been a puzzle for many years, since 

 Dean Herbert's time, in fact. According to the worthy 

 Dean, G. Gandavensis was raised in 1837 from G. oppositi- 

 florus and G. Natalensis, and not, as was stated by others, 

 including the raiser himself, one Beddinghaus, a gardener, 

 from the last-named and G. psittacinus. According to 

 Herbert, this latter cross is almost impossible ; at any rate, 

 he could not accomplish it, though he tried many times. 



G. Gandavensis was the first of the large-flowered, beauti- 

 ful, easily cultivated hybrid Gladioli that originated in gar- 

 dens. MonsieurEmile Lemoine, of Nancy, who is an authority 

 on all questions relating to garden Gladioli, has recently 

 stated that a French court gardener, named Souchet, set to 

 work to breed Gladioli, about forty years ago, by crossing G. 

 Gandavensis with G. blandus,G. ramosus (this, according to 

 Herbert, is itself a hybrid between G. oppositiflorus and G. 

 cardinalis), and he was soon followed by other French gar- 

 deners, who made of Gladioli a specialty. Our Mr. J. Kelway 

 has done as much as any one man toward the improvement 

 of Gladioli. He obtained Souchet's hybrids in 1857, and 

 crossed and saved seeds from them. The point I wish to em- 

 phasize is this : If Herbert was correct in stating that G. op- 

 positiflorus vi^as the parent of two of the most valuable of 

 the original hybrids, viz., G. Gandavensis and G. ramosus 



