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THE FLOWER GROWERS GUIDE. 



labiata gaudavense recently sold for 130 guineas each. Mr. E. I. Measures purchased 

 a form of C. labiata for 7s. Gd., and subsequently sold four pieces off the plant for 

 180 guineas. Odontoglossum Wilckeanum Pittise, sold for 150 guineas, speedily 

 doubled in value. Three forms of Od. crispum were recently sold for £900. Cypri- 

 pedium insigne Sanderre, however, perhaps realised more money than any other orchid. 

 Messrs. Sander introduced the first plant. This they divided into two, one-half being 

 publicly sold for 70 guineas, Mr. E. H. Measures, of Streatham, obtaining the other. 

 This he grew and divided into four parts, selling three of them. Mr. Sander bought 

 one for £250, and the original plant therefore soon grew into the value of £1,000. It is 

 a remarkable form of C. insigne, and a flower is represented in Fig. 17, preceding page. 



Eeverting to the wholesale destruction of orchids in their native haunts, this is greatly 

 to be deprecated. Though doubtless it takes many years to quite exterminate a species, 

 it can be done in time, and whatever new or improved forms might have sprung from the 

 crossing of these in a wild state are for ever lost. The field for orchid-collecting, though 

 still large, is narrowing, and it will be a bad day for all interested when the last 

 wildling of a novel character reaches us. Hybridists at home are doing good work — of 

 which more anon — but there is an interest and romance connected with a species never 

 before seen under cultivation and straight from its habitat, that is, in the estimation of 

 many persons, wanting in the very best of artificially raised kinds. 



Eespecting the habitats of orchids, these differ widely, and although having a 

 certain bearing on their cultivation, a knowledge of the conditions under which they 

 grow naturally is not so important as has been thought by some. A species may be 

 planted by Nature on the top of some tall tree where it is exposed to a tropical 

 sun by day in summer, and in winter to frost of more or less severity. If, by 

 providing a lesser range of temperature and giving the plant a firmer root-hold 

 and suitable atmosphere, we can improve it under cultivation, it is wiser to do so than 

 to follow Nature too closely. 



Many of these plants are true epiphytes in their habitats, but under cultivation are 

 found to do best, not on a bare block of wood as would be most natural, but in a prepared 

 compost that conserves the moisture about the roots and enables the plants to produce 

 larger growths and more flowers. Yet the knowledge of climatic and other con- 

 ditions obtaining in the habitat of a plant is to some extent a guide to its requirements 

 under cultivation, and the more fully these are described by collectors and others who 

 know, the better it must be for cultivators. 



