August 3. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
333 
the greatest triumph of skill. No gardener has ever 
yet succeeded in flowering Dim gremdiflora in anything 
like perfection, as far as my knowledge goes, although 
hundreds of it have been introduced in my own time. 
I knew a German gardener, who, on his return in 1838 
lrom serving Baron Ludwig, at Cape Town, brought 
over to England one hundred roots of this Disa in 
one box; he offered to sell some of them to me, lie 
gave me all the natural history of the plant, and he 
declared that no plant from the Cape need require 
less care; but all would not do; I had burned my 
fingers with it before, and I told him on the spot, 
that I would not believe his tale, or that any one 
could ever manage to grow the plant two years running. 
Soon after that, Sir John Herschel showed, in Regent 
Street, other ground orchids from the Cajie (Satiriums), 
which none of us could manage well, and he described 
to the Horticultural Society the exact conditions under 
which these Satiriums and the Disa grandiflora, flourished 
at the Cape; from this report I could see the honest 
German gardener was all right, and I repented at not 
having had some of the roots from him. I learned 
that Mr. Skirving, of Liverpool, bought up the whole of 
them, but what came of them after that I never heard. 
I dreamed, more than onco for the last fifteen years, that 
this Disa might be grown after all, and I sent out three 
times to the Cape for roots of it, but did not receive 
any; the next I heard of it was with Mr. Leach, two 
years back; since then, I had almost a monthly report 
of it from himself, and now I am convinced there is no 
more trouble in growing it, and in flowering it also, 
than there is in growing and flowering Valletta purpurea 
lrom the same country, a bulb which every cottager can 
now flower in his window; but in my early days, when 
this bulb was called Amaryllis purpurea , no one could 
flower it, and very few could keep it alive above two or 
three years; now, no one knows how to kill it, and it 
will be so with the Disa in a few years. Dr. Burchell, 
who first discovered the Vallota, said it was the only 
bulb of the order that he had found growing in boggy 
peat in Africa, that is the reason why it is an evergreen 
plant, and not knowing it to be so at first, was the 
cause why we could not manage it. Now Disa grandi¬ 
flora, though not the only ground orchid which grows 
naturally in boggy places, is the only ground orchid 
which is an evergreen. Here, then, lies the whole secret 
about all our failures with it; no sooner did the dry 
heat of June, July, or August, affect the lips of the 
leaves, and turned them brown, than we, in our igno¬ 
rance, began to withhold the usual supply of water, and 
finally put the plant to rest in the usual way, and we 
saw no more of it. Calochortus splendens and macro- 
carpet went exactly the same road, by the same moans, 
and in one season, throughout all England, Ireland, and 
Scotland, and wo never have had them since. 
Disa grandiflora is not at all a scarce plant at the 
Cape, nor difficult to get to it there. I would take in 
hand to go out after breakfast, in Cape Town, and be 
home to dinner with a whole load of it on my shoulder. 
It bears carriage from thence as well as any other Cape 
plant, but I think, or rather I am sure, that early in 
the spring there, which corresponds with our autumn, is 
the best time to take it up for removal to England. 
Sir John Herschel kept some plants of it out-of-doors 
for several years after his return from the Cape, but 
they did not thrivo well; the truth is, the plant is, 
strictly, a greenhouse plant, but requires as much air 
at all times as the Cape Heaths; also the very same 
kind of peat earth. Sir John Herschel gives the best 
account ot its natural condition; he says, “ It grows on, 
or near, the summit of the Table Mountain (immediately 
behind Cape Town), where the temperature is occasion¬ 
ally. 31i°, and occasionally, also, these were the 
minimum and maximum of a self-registering ther¬ 
mometer I left there for three years. Its habitat is on 
the margin of pools of standing water, the drainage of 
the boggy slopes of the mountain, where its roots are 
immersed. These are dry, or nearly so, in summer. Iu 
such localities it is, of course, frequently involved iu 
dense mists of the clouds, which, seen in the hottest 
months, often cover the whole summit of the mountain 
tor a week or a fortnight uninterruptedly.” So much 
wet at the roots and overhead might lead one into the 
error to suppose that such conditions were indispensable 
under cultivation, but we know it is far otherwise; and 
to imitate Nature to the letter would be more likely to 
lead us wrong on the other side In the Melon-beds 
floating on the Lake of Cashmere, the roots of the Melon- 
plants must be constantly in water; we could not manage 
them so in England, we want more sun for that; and 
the want of an African sun hinders us from imitating 
the boggy site and the misty atmosphere of Table 
Mountain; but without putting such stress on the 
strength of the sun, have we not the Sikkim Rhodo¬ 
dendrons iu the utmost health under far greater light 
from our clearer and drier sky in England than they 
were accustomed to in Sikkim, where the air is so 
charged vyith moisture as to enable some of these Rho¬ 
dodendrons to grow on the branches and arms of other 
trees, like air-plants, and where the sun is clouded for 
months together? No; Mr. Leach has proved, beyond 
doubt, that the Disa does not require more water at the 
roots, or more moisture in the air, than a Cape Heath 
under an English sky; there is now no room for con¬ 
jectures in the matter, the thing has been done to per¬ 
fection, and there is an end to all speculations about the 
Disa. The nature of the plant has been thoroughly 
studied, under favourable circumstances, running over a 
space of full three years or more, and the result has 
determined the proper course of culture throughout the 
year; but before I explain that course, let me describe 
the habit and aspect of the plant, and that will make 
the reason for the kind of treatment more clear and 
satisfactory. 
Mr. Leach’s plant was in a No. 10 pot, and the 
whole surface of the pot was crowded'with leaves; 
from the middle of this mass of leaves rose four scapes 
or flowering stems of from two feet to thirty inches; 
and before ihe flowers opened, a young gardener might 
be excused it he mistook the whole for a mass of Tube¬ 
rose ( Polianthes tiiberosa ); the leaves look very much 
that u'ay, but are not so long nor so wide as in the Tube¬ 
rose; the flower-stems are jointed all the way up, and 
there is a leaf at each joint, embracing the stem just as 
in the Tuberose; the number of flowers, I believe, are 
three to each stem in the natural condition ; and three 
were on some of the stems in this pot. From the habit of 
the plant it is possible that twenty flower-stems might 
rise from a patch of the plant which was not more than a 
loot iu diameter, so that the number on each stem would 
not lessen the efl’ect of a large patch of it on Table 
Mountain ; the flower is very large, and of great sub¬ 
stance ; the colours are chiefly orange and scarlet and 
lighter shades; it is probably the handsomest, and the 
boldest-looking flower of all ground orchids, and it lasts 
six weeks or more; the least extra heat to get it sooner 
into blossom injures the high colour in the flower 
materially, and July is the true season of its flowering 
here. When the flowering is over, the stem dies down, 
and the leaves at the bottom of the flower-stem from 
which it issues die also; this is extremely curious, and 
has been the reason why we of the old school failed to 
grow this plant. I want to put a great stress on this 
natural feature which cannot be altered by cultivation; 
and I might appeal to the youngest reader of The Cot¬ 
tage Garden eh, or to Sir Joseph Paxton, if it did not 
stand to reason that a bulb, after flowering, and with the 
leaves all dead, should not be put up to dry; they are 
