ARROW ROOTS 539 
C. VILLOSUM (shaggy). Flowers solitary, often 5 inches across, on 
hairy scapes 1 foot high; glossy, as though varnished, orange-red, varied 
with light green and dark purple; pouch large, light brown; May; 
Stove. Introduced from Burma, 1833. 
Cypripediwms are divided into three groups for pur- 
poses of cultivation. 1. The hardy species. These require 
a boggy, or at anyrate moist, somewhat shaded position, and they prefer 
peat soil. 2. The greenhouse species, viz. C. insigne, ete. These grow 
well when potted in a mixture of turfy loam and peat, and kept moist 
except for a few weeks in October and November. 3. The tropical species. 
Some of these are happy only when planted in peat and sphagnum, but 
the coarse-growing sorts thrive in loam and peat. They like plenty of 
water and a shaded position in a hot, moist house. The small C. nivewm 
and its allies do best when some nodules of limestone are mixed with the 
soil. They also prefer a position near the roof-glass. In potting the 
plants the lower fourth of the pot’s depth should be filled with clean, 
broken crocks, to ensure perfect open drainage. The roots of the plant 
should be spread out as widely as possible on the soil, and more pressed 
down upon them. Care should be taken that water does not lodge in 
the bases of the leaves, and that there is no° danger of stagnant water 
at the roots. These plants are all propagated by division. Hundreds 
of named garden hybrids have been raised within the last twenty 
years, no genus having proved so plastic in the hands of the breeder as 
this. The plants grow to flowering size from seeds in about three years. 
Description of Cypripedium insigne. A, upper portion of plant, with 
Plate 245. flowers of the average natural size, though they occur 
larger. Figs. 2 and 3 are front and side views of the column. 
Cultivation. 
ARROW ROOTS 
Natural Order ScITAMINEZ. Genus Muranta 
MARANTA (named in honour of B. Maranti, a Venetian botanist and 
physician, who died in 1554). A genus of about ten species of tuberous- 
or creeping-rooted herbs, with large sheathing leaves. The flowers have 
a calyx of three sepals, a corolla of six segments in two series, one of the 
inner series being much larger than the others. There is a single stamen, 
which is petal-like, and a similar but barren body, to which a hood-like 
style is attached. The species are natives of Tropical America, but they _ 
are widely cultivated in the East and West Indies, West Africa, ete. 
