Jung, 1922.] THE ORCHID REVIEW. nbs 
EXPORTING ORCHIDS FROM ENGLAND TO AUSTRALIA. 
By Jutta A. STUCKEY, UNLEY Park, S. AUSTRALIA, 
SHOULD like to say how much I am interested in the Orchid Review. 
The pages for the less well-informed have recently been helpful and 
inspiring. To read constantly of the successful growers whose plants thrive 
as if at home, is rather depressing to the Orchid lover whose Cattleyas do 
not throw out a shoot or whose Odontoglossums dwindle as with a furnace 
blast. 
Mr. Black has given some very useful hints on the treatment of im- 
ported Orchids. May I suggest that he, or some other person as able, 
should consider if an alteration in the time of exporting is not desirable. In 
England plants begin to grow in March and April ; * they go through the 
Season under expert care; flower at the due date; and then in, say 
September, they are dried off, packed, and posted to Australia or elsewhere. 
Well, Japan and New York are on the same side of the equator as England, 
and the plants will arrive at either place in much the same kind of 
atmosphere as they would have enjoyed in their former locality. But when 
they arrive in Australia it is November or December—our summer, and 
instead of- resting under genial conditions in the care of experienced men, 
they have to endure extreme heat, unfamiliar compost, and more or less 
unskilled cultivation. Many of the plants try to grow, but as the ther- 
mometer registers anything up to 108 Fahr. in the shade most of them die. 
I have seen wrecks of Maxillarias, Masdevallias, Cypripediums, Odontiodas, 
and many more, which made my heart ache. The pseudobulbs, leaves, 
roots, all attested to the beauty and vigour of the plants when packed, and 
many a tiny shoot had raised hopes which the hot and dry air of our 
Summers destroyed without mercy. 
_ Did you not water the stages, floors, etc.? I hear you ask. Certainly, 
but the water gets hot and tends to rot the plants unless very carefully 
Supplied. In the books one reads of dipping Odontoglossum crispum in 
water as you pass it. Try it here, and the plant goes. The trouble is that 
the plant has already gone through its routine of growth, and does not 
know what to make of four months of heat with brief intermissions of cool 
days and nights. I have known the thermometer register forty degrees of 
differing temperature in twenty-four hours. The puzzle to me is that any 
live, not that some die. What I want to suggest is, send the ‘‘cool” and 
Some “‘intermediate ” Orchids to Australia during the English winter or 
early Spring. On arrival, they will then have an autumn and winter so 
8enial that they will know no set-back, but grow as they would have done 
in their old locality. Wandas, Renantheras, Phalanopses and the like, on 
the Contrary, should arrive in our early summer. 
