﻿THE ORCHID REVIEW. 



[March, .904. 



ORCHID HYBRIDISING IN FLORIDA. 



We have previously had some very interesting notes of hybridising oper- 

 ations in the collection of T. L. Mead, Esq., Oviedo, Florida, and now 

 Mr. Mead sends another very interesting note, as follows : — 



" I have had a lot of little hybrids— Cattleyas, Laelio-cattleyas and 

 Dendrobiums — started outdoors on a mossy magnolia trunk, which have 

 endured the buffets of outrageous weather this winter in the most astonish- 

 ing manner. About one hundred plants came from mixed seed planted last 

 July. The trunk is nearly horizontal, and I put a cheese-cloth screen ever 

 it to keep the rains from washing the seeds away. Otherwise they were 

 unprotected, and there has been hardly any mortality among them, though 

 the thermometer has been down in the thirties, at sunrise, for weeks at a 

 time, and not infrequently below 32 , and even as low as 28 . About 

 seventy-five per cent, of similar plants protected in the greenhouse perished, 

 but these outsiders seem perfectly happy. When weeks of drought come 

 they shrivel up, and then plump up again as good as ever after the next 

 rain. The Dendrobiums must be mostly D. X Niobe varieties intercrossed, 

 but the Cattleyas, &c, are a miscellaneous lot, most likely several Laelia 

 purpurata crosses among them, as that is a hardy species. Perhaps Orchid 

 babies do not like so much coddling as we think they do. 



" Quite a number of pretty hybrids have bloomed with me during the 

 past year. Cattleya Schilleriana crossed with C. intermedia and with C. 

 Loddigesii (both from the same pod), also C. Schilleriana X maxima, C. 

 Bowringiana X Forbesii, two very handsome examples of C. Leopoldi X 

 Gaskelliana, and a specimen without record, but probably C. Leopoldi X 

 Laelia tenebrosa. I have now a C. Trianae X Perciva liana in bloom, just 

 ten years from seed. The plant grew very little in the first seven years — 

 was only two or three inches high at the end of that time, but during the 

 remaining three years it has made two bulbs a year, grown vigorously, and 

 bloomed from both the bulbs of 1903. Planted January 1894, bloomed 



January 1904. If the cross has not yet been named I think 



would be euphonious, and would be suggestive to anyone who wished to 

 remember the parentage. C. X Adela is the name of this hybrid. — Ed.] . 



" I have been trying photography again after dropping the art almost 

 entirely for ten years, and have had good successes in making life size 

 records of my recent hybrids. I intend hereafter to take a 

 similar picture of every hybrid that I bloom, as it is very little trouble, and the 

 expense is hardly worth considering when one has the camera and lens. 

 It seems a pity that every named flower should not be thus recorded, and a 

 print deposited with the Orchid Review for future reference." 



T. L. Mead. 



