20 THE ORCHID REVIEW. | [JANUARY, 1g22. 
AN AMATEUR’'S EXPERIENCE, 
By JOSEPHINE R. WALKER. 
UR Cypripediums have bloomed extraordinarily well this year, and 
0 have carried on some plants as many as sixteen blooms, notably on 
the insigne Sandere crosses and the insigne Dorothy, which, by the way, 
are. very lovely for table decoration as they light up so well. As they pass 
out of bloom we are potting them up, they nearly all seem to need it. We 
find they grow much quicker in the compost we use, which is about half 
rough fibre and half loam, and a little cut up sphagnum. Perhaps the 
amateur’s fondness for the Watering pot does not have so much effect in this 
compost as one composed of nearly all loam. In winter they do not seem 
to show the same tendency to damp-off during the cold spells, and as ours 
are many of them large plants they might easily do so. 
The Mexican Lelias and Leliocattleyas are now coming into bloom. I 
think the last summer has suited the Mexican plants very well, for they 
have made huge bulbs and look very vigorous and the picture of health. A 
friend, who grows these and Leeliocattleyas, asked me the other week to go 
down and look at his plants. It was one of those sunny days we had early 
in the autumn, and to my surprise he had some roller blinds drawn across 
the house-tops, making the interior half dark. _ When I asked him the 
are concerned they grow naturally in sunny positions. 
Four years ago last month we bought some Leliocattleyas from a 
collection that was being broken up. They were almost the saddest lot of 
plants I have ever seen, wobbling about in their pots, badly affected with 
scale, and with nearly all the roots eaten off by woodlice. We knocked 
the centre of the house. Now one would have thought that j 
