THE ORCHID REVIEW. 



DIES ORCHIDIANI. 



Examples of progressive good culture are always interesting, and some 

 remarkable cases have recently been noted in the Review. Mr. Wrigley's 

 specimen of Anguloa Clowesii, bearing nearly fifty flowers, as mentioned at 

 page 285, which gained the Veitch Memorial Medal in 1878, must surely 

 have created a record which has not since been surpassed, though this is 

 one of the species that used to be exhibited in fine condition years ago, 

 when specimen Orchids were more the fashion. And it is satisfactory to 

 find that the custom of growing such plants is not altogether out of vogue, 

 for Major Joicey's specimen, mentioned at p. 232, has progressed from a 

 small plant until it has produced an aggregate of thirty-three flowers, and 

 Mr. Thorne expresses the determination to grow it on until it produces 

 fifty flowers, and then exhibit it at the R.H.S. And we may not have 

 long to wait. 



And we have another example in a group which does not so readily 

 lend itself to the production of such specimens. The photograph of Mr. 

 Groves' noble specimen of Odontoglossum chiriquense, bearing six spikes, 

 each nearly three feet long, with an average of thirty flowers each, ought to- 

 have been reproduced, that all the world might see it, though the earlier 

 picture shows what that plant has done since 1898. And it seems that no 

 less*than eight spikes were actually produced. The plant now requires a 

 block four feet long, and what it will require in a few years if it progresses 

 at this rate can only be guessed. 



All the plants that I have mentioned were grown on from small pieces, 

 and such examples form object lessons, especially when the subjects are not 

 particularly tractable under ordinary conditions. But it is clear that we 

 cannot see them very frequently at our Shows, for a few of them would fill 

 a Pickford's van. But they might more often be photographed, and photo- 

 graphic illustrations are now so perfect that we might secure permanent 



