1852.1 THE PHILADELPHIA FLORIST. 233 



(r) under the influence of the high earth temperature of the hottest months p, 

 ° of the year, and no doubt undergoing at the same time, certain other n/ 

 constitutional changes, of whose exact nature nothing is known, but 

 which result in what gardeners call ripeness. Then succeed the wet 

 and cold of winter, which the Orchis tuber is now provided with the 

 means of resisting. Spring follows and earth temperature rises; the 

 new growth commences and leaves unfold. At this time A disap- 

 pears if it had not rotted off before ; it had already been dead matter 

 from the first completion of the growth of B for the food of which it 

 previously served. 



With the renewal of growth the following changes take place ; B 

 having thrown up a new stem, also produces from its neck certain 

 fibres, c c, which spread around it in the earth in a circle, and more 

 or less horizontally. It also produces a new tuber from one side of 

 its neck, which tuber may b-e called D. This D gradually organizes 

 itself as B did, sucking out of B the food therein contained, exactly as 

 B sucked its food out of A. It does not appear that after the first B 

 has any influence upon the growth of the plant, food for the leaves 

 being provided by c c, and returned by the leaves to D. All this 

 is going on during the growth of the new tuber D, the vegetation of 

 the leaves, the display of the blossoms, and the ripening of the seed- 

 vessels, if any are produced. In the midst of these important opera- 

 tions the plant collector takes the Orchid and puts it in his garden. 

 The flowering time is preferred because the plant is most easily found 

 at that period. All the horizontal roots, cc, are necessarily cut through 

 or mutilated, for they spread far around the central stem; the leaves 

 are crushed when in full activity, and when all they can do is impera- 

 tively demanded by the young tuber D ; and from the shock thus 

 communicated to the constitution, the young plant never recovers. D 

 is half-formed, is afterwards starved, and ends in being a shrivelled 

 impotent body, incapable of carrying on its race, or only capable of 

 producing an emaciated offspring. 



Butt if the new plants were not taken up till D was fully ripe, how 

 different would be the result. The fibres c c, would then be dead 

 and useless; the leaves would have completed their important duties, 

 and all the organization of which D is susceptible would have been 

 secured. In that state D would give birth to a new plant with all the 

 constitutional vigour proper to the species. That this is so, is proved 

 by the facility with which imported Orchis roots, collected by experi- 

 enced and sagacious persons, always grow, and by the vigour of their 

 first offspring. 



Those who know terrestrial Orchids only by the species commonly ) 



r -, wild in England, form a very inadequate notion of what they really p 



^are in the south. Orchis undulatifolia, militaris, fusca, papilionacea, G\ 



