298 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
RAISING ORCHIDS FROM SEED. 
ANYTHING about the raising of Orchids from seed has a value, but there is 
one very important matter that might have a little more attention paid 
to it, and that is the condition and strength of the seed-bearing parent. To 
make a weakly plant carry a seed-pod often ends in great disappointment, 
the plant being shaken beyond recovery, and, besides, the seed may be 
immature or of poor germinating power. As the best varieties are 
usually chosen for hybridising, their loss is a consideration, but the struggle 
with bad seed generally leads to more discontent. Raisers of plants, in 
general, from seed unhesitatingly assert that the strength of the plant begins 
in the seed—strong seed gives, with just treatment, strong plants, and 
poor seed, weaklings. And so it is with Orchids. There is, as arule, a 
fair amount of difficulty experienced in getting good seed up, and it would 
take not a little courage to guarantee the raising of any cross not previously 
tried, and, indeed, even then. But with strong, well-rooted, clean, and 
healthy parents the chances are in favour of success, and the hybridiser is 
at least on one point on an equal footing with nature. Seeds from a half- 
starved plant will, when exposed to heat and moisture, swell a little and 
become green, but the essential something is wanting to carry them through 
as far as to form the growing crown, at which stage they can be safely 
pricked off. I know that good seed has a disagreeable readiness to tarry in 
these stages of promise as well. 
Would it not be safe to assume that the right time to increase the 
fertility of Orchid seed is before the seed is ripe, and not afterr Are all 
the constituents required by the ripening seed abundantly present in peat 
and moss—and in soluble compounds? The strain which the strongest 
plants suffer when bearing seed with us is not evident in imported plants. 
With most species, the best plants to hybridise are strong, imported 
pieces flowering for the first or second time, and which still retain something 
of their natural vigour, and the worst are those which have been hackneyed 
from collection to collection via the sale-rooms. 
. M. BLACK. 
Streatham. J 
SEEDLING ODONTOGLOSSUMS. 
I THINK that if every one of us who are interested in Odontoglossum 
crispum all gave their experience of seed-raising among them it would be 4 
great mutual help. I am hybridising a great many, and hope for good 
results. There are seedlings in several collections, a few of them almost at © 
the floweting stage, | 
R. Brooman WHITE: 
