128 THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 
length ” and that the leaves usually wither about the time the 
plant blossoms, although Gray mentions a variety that does re- 
tain its leaves, and this produces “ greenish-cream colored flow- 
ers” and occurs indry ground. I once examined five spikes of 
S. cernua containing forty-five blossoms, and but five of these 
had lost their pollen-masses, while one had lost its pollen-mass 
but retained its disc. Some plants of this species, domesti- 
cated in England, years ago, bloomed from August to the mid- 
dle of November, and were thought to grow and make offsets 
more freely than most species belonging to the family. 
Sweet, in the British Flower Garden, enumerates a number 
of American Orchids that were successfully grown in England 
during the early part of the century (Lzparis felifolia was 
naturalized as early as 1758), and 1s of the opinion that all 
Orchids might be raised from seed by surrounding them with 
“turfs of grass” for the young plants to attach themselves to 
when the plants first vegetate, ‘as they appear to beall more or 
less parasitic in a young state.” Or, he would cover the ground 
with moss, scatter the seeds over it, and with a watering-pot 
wash them gently in. Species requiring a clayey soil he would 
plant on a little “mount” made of chalk covered with sandy 
loam mixed with powdered chalk. Stewart Murray, curator 
of the Glasgow Botanical Garden, gives in the Zransactions 
of the Hortecultural Society of London, 1826, a list of 26 North 
American Orchids, Calypso borealis among them, and the follow- 
ing account of his treatment of them. “I chose a well shel- 
tered place, nearly the lowest in the garden, facing south, took 
out the soil to the depth of 16 inches, set in a wooden frame, 
2% feet high at the back, 15 inches in front, with movable 
glass lights, and filled it to the ground level with a compost, % 
leaf-mould, %% turfy peat full of roots and stems, the remaining 
third 1s sphagnum, % sand, the whole well broken and mixed 
but not riddled. Care was taken to keep the surface a little 
higher for those requiring less moisture, like Cyp. arietinum, 
