January 17 , 1880 . ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
39 
beverage simply because they have never tasted any good.”— 
Siluria. 
PLANTING UNDER TREES. 
Reading the remarks of your correspondent, Mr. Muir, under 
the above heading on page 15, and having for some years past had 
the management of large shrubberies and the planting of extensive 
spaces under wall trees, and where frequently the trees are much 
too close together for their mutual benefit, I can hardly agree with 
him when he says that “ it is a mistake to recommend Box, Laurels, 
and Aucubas for planting under trees.” Propet ly planted I find 
they succeed admirably, nothing better ; the Lauiels especially 
growing luxuriantly enough to necessitate a good deal of pruning 
annually, which is their chief defect as covert plants, for to keep 
them to a uniform height entails an amount of labour, but when 
well done the effect is good. Box and Aucubas are quite at home 
under the shade of trees, provided, as recommended by Mr. Muir, 
that a fair start is given them by having a good depth of soil. As to 
its quality they are not at all particular—road scrapings, leaf mould, 
exhausted soil from Vine borders, charred rubbish, anything in fact 
that can be collected or spared for the purpose will suit them well. 
I have nothing to say against the Butcher’s Broom as a covert 
plant under trees ; but Box, Laurels, and Aucubas are easily 
propagated, easily grown, or cheaply purchased, and are, I think, 
jnore elegant plants than Butcher’s Broom ; they are also, and will 
continue to be, much more generally planted. 
Daphne Laureola, or Spurge Laurel, does very well under the 
shade and drip of trees, and where the soil suits it Rhododendron 
ponticum makes a dense undergrowth ; but it is a mistake to 
recommend Hollies for the purpose.— William Nash, Badminton 
NOTES ON GRAPES. 
Like Mr. Hilton, I gladly welcome any information I can obtain on 
the subject of Vine culture, and the fair and friendly spirit in which 
his criticisms were given should in common courtesy be met with equal 
fairness. I am thankful to your correspondent forgiving a more definite 
explanation of his ideas on ventilating judiciously, by which he mikes 
it clear that on damp, cold nights he would leave as much as an inch of 
front ventilation on a vinery in which Madresfield Court, was grown. 
Now I think that there are very few Grape growers who would 
think of having that amount of air admitted by the front ventilators 
either by night or day, during the colouring process, when rain was 
descending in such a deluge as it did so often last year, and in order to 
counteract the ingress of so much damp air that would find its way 
into the house under such conditions, unnecessarily hard firing must be 
resorted to to prevent the moisture in the atmosphere causing the berries 
to crack, unless there are peculiar circumstances in Mr. Hilton’s case 
that have the same effect but are not apparent. I am acquainted with 
several excellent Grape growers, who grow and colour Madresfield 
Court splendidly, and who have never experienced any difficulty in 
regard to cracking, although no precautions were taken to prevent the 
Vines being treated just the same as the Black Hamburghs in the same 
house ; but in both instances the berries are much smaller than they 
should be, and although the Vines are liberally fed and watered, nothing 
seems to have the slightest effect of increasing the size of berry. I be¬ 
lieve it is generally the case with this variety that the larger the berry ■ 
the more difficult it is to colour well without cracking, and it is for this 
reason that we have acted in the cautious way already described when 
admitting air, the results having been the most satisfactory when these 
precautions were taken, and to give force to that argument I mentioned 
the case of those that have on several occasions been exhibited from 
Longford, the credit for which rests with the gardener in chief under 
whose instructions they were grown. I am pleased to see that Mr. 
Hilton admits of a certain amount of truth in my statement anent the 
overwatering of Vine borders, and I quite agree that many gardeners 
do not give enough water. I think it is the energy with which this 
doctrine has been preached during the last ten years that has caused 
many to err on the side of overwatering. On the same principle as 
thousands of Chrysanthemums used to be annually ruined because it 
was the practice to say, “ Oh, you can’t give them too much water but 
what changes have taken place in that respect during the last few years. 
The pots are now carefully examined to see when each plant requires 
water, with the result that hundreds of gardeners now grow these 
popular flowers well where formerly only those were successful who 
among other things, managed the watering intelligently. It seems to 
me that watering Vine borders has been overdone in a somewhat 
similar way, though not perhaps to such a great extent. With narrow, 
borders, well drained, and full of active roots, the amount of water Vines 
require for their well-being in hot seasons is surprising ; but in other 
cases, where the soil is a little heavy and adhesive, and the drainage not 
by any means perfect, the same amount of water in a given space would 
be ruinous. To take another case, where the borders are wide and deep 
examination will generally show that such borders arc rarelv well filled 
with roots, and, however well drained they may be, it is an easy matter 
to overwater in such a season as last year. 
The statement made by Mr. Hilton that the temperature of the I 
house in which his Black Hamburghs, Lady Downe’s, and Gros Colmans 
are grown was seldom above 70°, is not a very definite one. In the case 
of the last-named varieties there would not be much prospect of colour¬ 
ing them well if the temperature was seldom above that point, and in 
the case of Black Hamburghs. so much would depend upon the amount 
of fire heat and air given to keep the temperature within such limits. 
I have known houses of late Hamburghs in hot seasons colour splendidly, 
without fire heat, with the bottom ventilators left wide open night and 
day, and I have also seen them coloured equally well in the same house 
with comparatively little air and a fair amount of fire heat. And my 
opinion is that the non-colouring of Black Hamburghs in dull seasons 
is to a far greater extent due to the improper regulation of air, heat, and 
moisture than to the weather, although it must be admitted that when 
the weather is bright and hot much less judgment is required in this 
matter; hence the more satisfactory results in many instances.— 
H. JDunkin. 
[A pacer by Mr. Lewis Castle, read at the Horticultural Club, January 15th, 1889] 
Popular as Orchids have become in recent years, none has 
secured a greater share of favour than the Cypripediums, though 
they certainly cannot be ranked amongst the most brilliant of the 
family in floral colouring. In devoting a few minutes to the con¬ 
sideration of their chief characters we may gain some idea why they 
are so popular, but it would be impossible to deal exhaustively with 
the subject in a paper of this kind, which is intended to be sugges¬ 
tive, and as a prelude to discussion. 
GENERAL CHARACTERS. 
Orchid flowers are usually recognised without difficulty even by 
those uninitiated in horticultural or botanical mysteries, but no genus 
stands out so conspicuously distinct from others, yet so uniform in 
the principal characters itself, as the Cypripedium. Everyone 
knows a Cypripedium the instant a flower is seen ; there is not the 
slightest difficulty about it, no dinger of mistaken identity. The 
variations are numberless, yet are united by certain predominant 
characters which constitute one of the most clearly defined groups 
of Orchids. It is assumed that the origin of the Cypripedium 
dates far back in the history of present plant life, at a time 
when Orchids had not advanced so far in their complexity of 
structure, and a simpler order of things prevailed. Darwin made 
a special point of this in his work on the Fertilisation of Orchids, 
and he remarks that “an enormous amount of extinction must have 
swept away a multitude of intermediate forms,” leaving the Cypri¬ 
pediums known to us isolated from all other members of its family 
with the exception of a few obscure species that do not come within 
the horticulturist’s ken. 
The antiquated simplicity claimed for Cypripedium flowers is 
not, however, very apparent to the casual observer ; the sepals, 
petals, and labellum are present as in other Orchids, there is also 
the column compounded of stamens and pistil in the usual position, 
but here a difference is noted that will furnish a key to the whole 
structure. At the top of the column and just above the entrance 
to the lip is a fleshy plate various in size and shape which occupies 
the place of the anther case in most other Orchids, and being 
theoretically regarded as a metamorphosed or functionless stamen, 
it takes the name of staminode. Behind this are two anthers, one 
on each side of the column, another divergence from the normal 
Orchid structure ; then below the staminode is a stigmatic plate 
projecting from the front of the column. The shape of the 
labellum is also exceptional, and not only gives the plant its 
botanical name, but also its popular and very widely accepted one 
of “ Ladies’ Slippers,” varied in North America by the title 
Mocassin Flower, both referring to the pouch or slipper-like lip. 
Here, again, it may be remarked, the assumed simplicity of structure 
is by no means evident, for the labellum is widely different from 
all other Orchids, and the form is approached by very few flowers, 
the Calceolaria affording perhaps the most familiar example of any 
similar pouch-like structure. We can scarcely imagine how an 
organ such as the Cypripedium lip could be developed even from 
the strange forms which prevail in the Orchid family without a 
very long series of changes. It is so artificial in appearance, if 
that term is admissible, and seems to be so exactly adapted for its 
particular purpose, that it is difficult to imagine it to represent an 
earlier and simpler form of structure. If we may indulge in such 
fancies, the most probable view h, that starting from a primitive 
