THE ORCHID REVIEW. 



DIES ORCHIDIANI. 



I have been asked what I think of the case Low versus Appleton, reported 

 so fully last month. Is Cypripedium insigne Harefield Hall variety 

 permanent ? Does its essential character vanish if forced in heat ? If 

 nobody acted improperly, and no one made a mistake, where did the 

 error originate ? The question is too big to answer. It seems to 

 resemble the noted case of Cattleya Aclandise alba. The plant was 

 purchased under a certain name, and sold again without flowering, and 

 there seems to have been a warranty that it was correct, or that if it 

 flowered at all it would flower correct— the legal talent does not seem to 

 have decided what would happen if it failed to flower — and in the end it 

 did not flower correct, or proved to be something else. The moral that I 

 should draw from the case would be, don't sell a plant on the warranty of 

 someone else, unless you have independent reason for knowing it to be 

 correct. The legal decision seems to have been that the plant which 

 Messrs. Low flowered never was C. insigne Harefield Hall var. The 

 question then is who gave the erroneous name ? The matter should be 

 cleared up, but in the case of Cattleya Aclandise alba it never was. Will 

 history repeat itself? 



The Certificate question has cropped up again in a new form. 

 M. A. A. Peeters writes in a recent issue of the Gardeners' Chronicle (p. 7): — 

 " In the interests of those who submit hybrid plants to the Royal Horticultural 

 Society for certificate, and of Orchid hybridists in particular, it seems 

 desirable that there should be an understanding of the basis upon which 

 certificates are given or withheld. I refer specially to my plant of Laelio- 

 cattleya X Martinet! var. Coronation, which I exhibited at the recent Rose 

 Show, when, to my surprise, the certificate was withheld, because, in the 

 case of one of the parents (Laslia tenebrosa) there was, in the opinion of 

 some of the Orchid Committee, no trace of this species. This appears to 

 be an unsatisfactory ruling, and it leads to the inquiry as to what happens 

 or will happen when secondary, and worse still when tertiary hybrids are 

 submitted. Can it be affirmed that in such hybrids distinct traces of each 



