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THE ORCHID REVIEW. 



[June, 1904. 



until now ; but it is worth waiting for." Mr. Day's plant is said to have 

 been purchased by Mr. B. S. Williams for 100 guineas, and when it flowered 

 again was figured in the Orchid Album, ii., t. 25. 



In 1893 it was made a variety of Cymbidium eburneum (Veitch Man. 

 Orch., ix., p. 15), but by this time it was little more than a tradition in 

 gardens, and it is doubtful whether the original plants now exist. 



The re-appearance of the species in cultivation is interesting, though it 

 comes from a new and distinct locality, and the plant exhibited has the 

 blotches on the lip more numerous than in the original ones, and partially 

 confluent. The plant exhibited bore an inflorescence of four flowers, the 

 colour being ivory white, with a pair of orange-coloured crests on the lip, 

 a yellow area in front, and numerous large purple blotches nearer the 

 margin. It is a very handsome species, and it is to be hoped that this time 

 it will not be as quickly lost sight of. R. A. Rolfe. 



LEAF MOULD FOR ORCHIDS. 



When writing on the above subject during the long winter evenings, that 

 discussion of the same might be made before the New York Agricultural 

 Society, it did not occur to me that such wide publicity would ensue as to 

 be reprinted in the Orchid Review, or that the same would be favoured with 

 an analysis by "Argus.'' In the light of these recent developments a little 

 further light may perhaps be necessary to help define the position taken in 

 writing on this subject. 



It should first be said that the remarks were made specially for 

 cultivators here in the United States, and cannot apply in British gardens 

 with proper or equal facility. The reason is plain, probably nine-tenths of 

 all the Orchids grown here are watered with the hose-pipe ; skilled labour is 

 very scarce, and, when found, is costly, so that in most places where 

 Orchids are cultivated watering is done largely in a haphazard way, with no 

 evil results if Osmunda fibre is used ; whereas if we had to use the water pot 

 with the great amount of circumspection so ably depicted by Mr. J. Wilson 

 Potter in his remarks at pp. 106-111, we should never get the work done, 

 and in winter, when the interiors of glass roofs are often coated every night 

 for weeks with a coating of ice, which sometimes remains there all day, the 

 amount of drip which is inevitable with even the best construction would be 

 fatal to all plants that were unfortunate enough to be beneath it. 



We found that when our collection of O. crispum were in leaf mould in 

 a north house they did not need water all winter, neither did they make any 

 growth, but since removing them to a house where the winter sun is 

 available, watering about once a week, using the Cookson formula always in 

 the water, the miserable scraps of two years ago are fine specimens now. 



