4 OS THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, September 29, 1857 
ONCIDIUM LURIDUM; atratum. 
Collected by Hartweg for the Horti¬ 
cultural Society at Tampico. 
"Whether or not O. luridum is really a 
mere variety of the Carthagena Oncicl be¬ 
comes more and more doubtful as our 
knowledge of such plants extends. In the 
present instance it is unnecessary to open 
that question, the plant now mentioned 
being undoubtedly a very fine form of the 
lurid Oncid, whatever the relation of the 
latter to the Carthagena Oncid may finally 
prove to be. With the habit of the com¬ 
mon form of the species this combines 
flowers smaller than usual, very flat, with 
olive and rose-coloured sepals and petals, 
and a rich crimson lip, furnished at the 
base with five purple-black tubercles, four 
of which surround the fifth; of these tu¬ 
bercles the central and two anterior are 
oblong and simple, the two posterior are 
concave, or almost kidney-shaped with the 
concavity backwards. The wings of the 
column are oblong truncated fleshy bodies 
attached by the narrowest end. It is a 
fine variety, in some respects like the 
purple-lipped Oncid ( 0. hcematochilum), 
and requiring the same treatment as O. 
luridum itself.— {Horticultural Society's 
Journal.) 
ON FLOWER PEGS. 
By A. Forsyth, C.M.H.S. 
In some branches of horticulture the rudest materials are 
still used, and appliances of a primitive character resorted 
to, as if gardening with us were only as yet in its infancy. 
Surely the finishing stroke to a bed of flowers is the pegging 
down or tying up of the branches, so as to show off the bed 
as a whole to the greatest possible advantage. 
Passing over the subject of flower-sticks, I shall confine 
myself to pegging and peg making. In the ordinary arrange¬ 
ments of nature we find all flowers more or less elevated; 
at all events this is the rule, and flowers prostrate either on 
the earth or on the water are the exceptions to this rule; it 
is therefore an unnatural practice to bind them to the earth ; 
most plants, too, have an upward tendency, consequently 
bending down is apt to break them. For these reasons, 
therefore, I find it desirable to employ a prop to hold the 
flower up from the earth in addition to the hooked stick to 
keep it down. This appliance will be understood by a glance 
at the accompanying woodcuts, being neither more nor less 
than a forked stick, such as is used on a large scale to sup¬ 
port the limbs of Apple trees when heavily laden. The fork 
for propping up small plants is made of the same material 
as that used for the hooked peg of horticulture, namely, the 
fronds of the common Fern {Pteris aquilina) ; only in the 
props the shank or stem runs downward, Whilst in the 
hooked peg the shank runs upward in regard to the frond 
from which they are cut. Although I am anxious to in¬ 
troduce a better and a cheaper article than fern timber for 
this purpose, I prefer stating the case in this homely way in 
order that certain old-fashioned parties may try the experi¬ 
ment, and likewise that by contrasting the two systems all 
sorts of readers may comprehend more clearly the drift of 
my argument, which is that props and pegs manufactured 
by experienced hands can be rendered less clumsy and less 
expensive than those formed by the clasp-knife of the 
labouring man. 
It is impossible to make hooked pegs out of the fronds of 
fern without having the small end tapering to the earth; 
so that, however hard it may be to thrust them in, it is not 
hard to pull them out, especially if they are put in perpen¬ 
dicularly to the earth’s surface as they generally are, whereas 
if put in slanting the weight of earth would help to keep them 
firm ; but all pegs made of green materials naturally shrink 
in drying, and consequently get loose. In addition to the 
fern frond pegs above alluded to, there are wooden ones 
made from the spray of birch, &c.; indeed, the uses of a 
birch besom about London may be stated thus,—first it is 
employed to sweep the lawn, secondly to peg the flower-beds, 
and lastly, to light the hothouse fires. 
Iron hair pins are used as pegs for plants, and are both 
neat and cheap, and when made sufficiently large answer for 
some plants, but still they are liable to corrosion and other 
faults. The wooden loop of deal or willow, of the same 
shape as the hair pin and of the strength of a lucifer match, 
answers very well, but it is subject to very clumsy mishaps 
in unpractised hands; nevertheless this loop as well as the 
hair pin has always a leg too many to be neat, since any 
article that could do its work with one support is preferable 
to one requiring two, and the very character of these pegs 
and loops necessarily limits them to the small size of pegs. 
When a shoemaker wants pegs to tack heel pieces to¬ 
gether, it is quite astonishing to see how cleverly he cuts 
them out; sections of a beech branch ar© sawed from half 
an inch to an inch in thickness and five or six inches in 
diameter, these are cleft into pieces of the size and shape of 
a gentleman’s dressing-comb, and these combs are again 
cleft, as it were, tooth by tooth, and thus the pegs are formed. 
Now, if a labouring man were set to work at six o’clock in 
the morning to make pegs, and were told that every one 
must be wedge-shaped and pointed, and that he had to 
make 30,000 before night, he would certainly think it a very 
unreasonable demand, whereas the shoemaker would accom¬ 
plish the task in the ten hours and have time to spare. 
