Aug., 1892. 
THE CULTIVATION OF ORCHIDS. 
181 
of diminutive snakes. Terrestrial orchids produce fleshy and 
fibrous roots that are confined to the soil, and partake more 
of the nature of ordinary roots. As many of these plants 
are deciduous, losing their leaves in the autumn, and as many 
do not produce perennial stems, they obviously need some 
store of strength for another season ; this is provided for by 
the tubers, which numbers of our British orchids produce. 
THE STEMS. 
The orchids which possess true stems are chiefly those of 
the Vanda, Aerides, Saccolabium, and Angraecum type, in 
which the leaves are produced in a two-ranked (distichous) 
manner on opposite sides of the stem, and produce their 
flowers from the axils of the leaves; some of these attain a 
height of twelve feet or more, and are the giants of the orchid 
family. 
THE PSEUDO-BULBS. 
To the swollen base of the stem, which in manv orchids 
assumes an ovoid form a few inches high, and in others 
becomes cylindrical and stem-like several feet in length, 
the name pseudo-bulb is given, and though very different in 
appearance, it is practically a tuber above ground, and appears 
to serve in a similar way, as a storehouse of nutriment, to be 
subsequently used by the plant. All growers understand this, 
and know that unless large and well-ripened pseudo-bulbs 
are obtained, good flowers cannot be expected, and as the 
pseudo-bulbs improve year by year, so do the flowers advance 
and increase. In the Dendrobiums the pseudo-bulbs become 
quite stemlike, either erect or drooping, cylindrical and several 
feet long, bearing the flowers at the nodes over the whole 
length. In most of the others the growth of one season 
forms the bulb of the following one, producing its flowers 
from the top or base. 
FLOWERS. 
We have outside a row of three sepals, then come three 
petals, two of which usually more or less resemble the sepals 
in shape and colouring, while the third petal (as we may con¬ 
sider it for practical purposes), which usually differs consider¬ 
ably in size, colour, and form, and is the lowest in the flower, 
is known as the labellum or lip. This labellum is sometimes 
prolonged backwards at the base into a tail or spur, which 
usually contains honey, and in the wonderful Angrcecum 
sesquipedole of Madagascar the spur is more than a foot long. 
So commonly does the nectary of orchids appear to offer 
temptations to insects, that Darwin ventured to state the 
probability that some moth, or similar insect, was concerned 
in its fertilisation, and possessed for the purpose a proboscis 
