THE ORCHID REV1EI 



le necessary degree of humidity, who shall gainsay it ? It tm 



ttters not how 



le water is given, so long as it is sufficient and applied in th 



e right place. 



hope the Commission will follow the matter up, for it can 



hardly be left 



" An old grower " is in no such hesitating frame of mind. He says 

 culture in leaf-mould is no new idea, but was tried long ago and proved a 

 failure. There is nothing equal to good fibrous peat and sphagnum moss, 

 with plenty of drainage to take off superfluous water. " It is'nt natural, 

 this new-fangled treatment." This is the substance of his remarks, and 

 we may give the question a moment's consideration. It seems to be a 

 case of leaf-mould versus peat and sphagnum, and I wonder which is the 

 more " natural/' Most growers swear by sphagnum for surfacing, and 

 often mix it with the compost, but most of the plants never saw a piece of 

 sphagnum in a wild state. It is a bog moss, and is not found on the trees 

 where the Orchids grow. Other mosses and lichens may be there in plenty 

 — I have often seen them attached to the roots of imported plants — but 

 who advocates using them as potting materials ? And it is a question 

 whether many of the plants grow in fibrous peat, using the term in its true 

 sense. Many of them grow in accumulations of decaying vegetation- 

 leaves, twigs, &c. — otherwise humus, and the new compost is nothing else, 

 so that I fail to see what there is " unnatural " about it. Sphagnum is not 

 used because it is natural for the plants to grow in it, but because it is 

 a splendid moisture-retaining material, and most Orchids are essentially 

 moisture-loving plants, and so they thrive in sphagnum. The evidence 

 seems to be that some of them thrive in leaf-mould,, too, so let us give the 



A few weeks ago I read an article on " Empiricism v. Natural Con- 

 ditions " {Trinidad Bulletin, 1901, p. 310), which is interesting and instruc- 

 tive in this connection. After a preliminary discussion, the author remarks 

 that the essence of empiricism seems to be an idea that no knowledge of the 

 conditions that exist naturally in the habitat of a plant is of the same 

 value, from a cultivator's point of view, as that obtained by actually 

 attempting to grow the plant under the various conditions existing in 

 modern horticultural structures ; and he then proceeds : — " It is quite true 

 that plants often appear to exist under quite different conditions to those 

 generally known, or conceived of, in their natural habitat; but an examina- 

 tion in full, and an accurate knowledge of each of these conditions, generally 

 proves that the essential points required by the plant are really there, or 

 they will not thrive. 



