The Quest and Culture of Orchids 
By G. BKR'l'RAND MITCHELL 
PART II 
T here is, some eight miles out f rom New ^’ork 
City, located on the famous old Plank Road 
of New Jersey, an establishment whose chief 
output is the Orchidaceous plant. Here the amateur 
and the orchid enthusiast may acquire valuable 
knowledge of the care and cultivation of these tropical 
imports. Visitors are welcomed and extended every 
courtesy by the senior member of the firm, a man of 
forty years’ experience, or by his sons, who possess 
that marked Teutonic trait for floral culture. Of the 
one hundred hothouses averaging twenty feet in 
width by one hundred and fifty feet in length, sixteen 
houses are devoted to the epiphytes alone. These 
include more than one hundred and fifty varieties and 
number about fifty thousand plants in stock. 
1 he writer found here immense quantities of ever¬ 
greens and conifers, box and bay trees, palms, 
ferns and flowering shrubs—but as he evinced a 
desire to visit the orchid department, the firm-mem¬ 
ber’s face expressed his pride and pleasure, for this is 
a “ hobby” as well as a specialty of this establishment. 
A visit w as first made to the houses de\ oted to 
the Cattleya family. d his and the closely allied 
genus, Lielia, are perhaps the most popular, useful 
and showy of the orchids. Among the inexpensive 
and easily-grown plants of this family we saw' the 
Cattleya lobata, the C. Mendelli and the C. Triancc a 
native of Colombia and a splendid winter flower, 
selling at $3.00 a plant. A very beautiful pure white 
variety, the Cattleya Triance alba, has been flowered 
in this nursery and is valued at ^50.00. 'I'he blos¬ 
soms of the Cattleya Mossice, a native of Venezuela, 
vary from pure white to rose-purple. The Cattleya 
gigas, of Colombia, a summer variety, is no doubt the 
finest of all Cattleyas, giving one of the largest blos¬ 
soms, eight to nine inches in diameter, hut is more 
difficult to grow and retjuires a long rest every year. 
A charming group of the Cattleya illiiuiinosa, a 
hybrid crossed from the C. aurea, caught our atten¬ 
tion, and the beautiful flowers, swaying in the current 
of air caused by the opened door, filled the damp at¬ 
mosphere with the delicate odor of the tea rose, d'he 
CATTI.EYA GIGAS 
