ORCHID CONFERENCE. 



57 



vandas, to try them in baskets, using plenty of crocks and charcoal 

 where obtainable, and only a little sphagnum moss. 



In growing this class of plants, if the growers would but take 

 the hint from the denrobes, which grow with them in their 

 native habitats, and make the growing-time of the saccolabium 

 to correspond with theirs, they would give their plants less heat 

 and water in winter, and more in spring and summer, and a 

 better condition would come upon them. The excessive heat 

 which is often given to saccolabiums and aerides, and given, too, 

 in winter, and while they are so far away from what little light 

 there is, stunts them, prevents their flowering, and makes it 

 hard work for them even to live. 



Materials for Potting. 



Now as to materials for potting. Good living sphagnum for 

 saccolabiums, aerides, vandas, phahenopsis, angraecunis, and others 

 of like growth, and the fibre of peat composed of fern root alone 

 for cattleyas and laelias, has always been considered the best. 

 Unfortunately, much of the peat of late years has been of grass 

 and heath root, which is liable to rapid decay, and consequently 

 to cause injury to the plants. Various materials, such as cocoa- 

 nut fibre, have been advanced to supersede peat, but none have 

 proved acceptable. I therefore recommend all who wish their 

 plants well to keep to the sphagnum moss and the best peat they 

 can get, using the less of the latter when it is not good, and to leave 

 experiments to others. There are always plenty ready to try 

 new things, and curiously enough it is never the learner who 

 carries the experiments to a serious conclusion, but the well-tried 

 old hand, who, having done all that is good and reasonable, goes 

 in for a new idea on a large scale. 



I can call to mind several unaccountable instances of this 

 kind, in one of which I remember a clever grower in the north, 

 who had for years grown his plants to perfection, suddenly 

 became possessed with the idea that chopped sphagnum, and 

 what appeared to me to be road-grit, was the proper thing for all 

 Orchids, and forthwith he proceeded to pot them in it. In 

 another case I found that a previously well-grown collection had 

 been potted in sphagnum moss and what I was told was prepared 

 cocoa-nut fibre. How effectual the preparation was in getting 

 the plants ready to depart this life I need not say. 



Above all things a steady perseverance in what others have 



