36 THE ORCHID REVIEW. [FesruARy, 19t4. 
CNIS 
ae CYPRIPEDIUM FAIRRIEANUM: A WARNING. Be 
Koited 
SEE in the January issue of the Orchid Review (page 20) that the plants 
of Cypripedium Fairrieanum are beginning to lose their vigour, as did 
the first importation. It is not, I trust, a general complaint as yet, but it 
is one I have been quite expecting, as I feel sure it is a plant that resents 
too moist and even airs and temperature. Its habitat is no longer a secret 
(see O.R., xvii. p. 373), and it grows at a considerable elevation, where the 
nights must be cool when there is a clear sky. Five years ago I had three 
small, freshly-imported bits sent out to me at Nice, where I find C. insigne 
and its varieties are quite happy, grown at the foot of an olive tree with 
some sheltering shrubs to screen the plants from summer suns and winter 
frosts. These three plants have now so thriven and increased that it is 
evident they enjoy the same conditions as C. insigne, with this small difference 
that I find they like a warmer position 7m summer, in fact they like more 
sun heat. When I came out last October I found the first blooms of C. 
Fairrieanum just open. To-day, on the 2oth of January, the latest flowers 
are just fading, having lasted more than three months, having endured 
lately, without apparent injury, three nights below freezing and a snow- 
storm that for a short time threatened to fill their pouches with snow. 
Certainly their vigour has increased year by year, and they have undergone 
temperatures up to 88° and go° in the shade on occasions, and in winter 
seem all the better for the cold nights so long as the day temperature rises 
during the day to 50° as a maximum. This winter is the coldest they have 
undergone, but I now quite expect they require a very different atmosphere — 
to the moist and still cool air of Intermediate Orchid houses in England. 
I therefore hope all those whose plants are seeming to dwindle and lose 
vigour will not fail to give them a much airier and colder treatment in 
winter, and a sunnier and more open-air treatment in summer. 
It is hard to say what some Orchids will nof endure! I saw good 
masses of Lelia anceps that had been growing for four years on an olive 
tree in a sheltered garden here. The morning I saw them there had been 
three degrees of frost, which had not spoilt the numerous spikes of flower — 
that hung down in much beauty! The only difference I could see was 
that the flowers were rather smaller than those under glass and grown in 
heat. The plants and the new bulbs were thoroughly vigorous and healthy. 
I shall be interested to see if they suffer from this late cold weather, and 
propose to try how they will answer with me, though my garden is not 
so near the sea or quite so sheltered. : 
Many of the modern hybrid Cypripediums are now so round and solid 
in the dorsal sepal, and so stiff and “ overfed” in general outline, that ig 
