72 i GARFIELD PARK CONSERVATORY 
the vanilla plant, is a most expensive product. The vanilla crop is 
always altogether inadequate to the demand. 
Zingiber officinale, or GINGER, belongs to the Zingiberaceae, a tropical 
family without local representatives. Ginger was known to the 
Hindus before the Christian era, and was prized by the ancient Greeks 
and Romans. Attempts are now being made to grow ginger commerci- 
ally in California and Florida. The plants are not known to produce 
seeds, and are propagated by planting rootstocks. When the plant 
dies down at the end of the rainy seson, the rootstock, which is often 
a foot long, and much knotted and crooked, is dug up, washed, and 
prepared for market in one of three ways. (1) Roots boiled 15 min- 
utes and then dried. This produces black ginger. (2) Roots peeled, 
washed in cold water, and dried. This produces the commonly known 
white ginger. (3) Roots boiled until soft, peeled, boiled again in 
thick syrup, then dried. This produces preserved ginger. The chief 
crops of commercial ginger are grown in India and Jamaica. 
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The Warm House 
HIS house is used for exhibiting tropical plants that have col- 
ored or variegated foliage. The plantations are not permanent 
ones, but are varied somewhat from time to time. From Novem- 
ber to June much space is given over to the display of Codiaeums, or 
crotons. From middle June to middle September there is a great 
display of Caladiums. 
The temperature and the humidity in this room are the highest 
maintained anywhere in the Conservatory. Most of the plants in 
this house, like those in the Aeroid House, take the greater part of 
their nourishment from the air by means of aerial roots. In their 
native lands they grow chiefly on trees. Here they are grown in pots 
of fiber, or on sticks that have been wrapped with sphagnum moss 
and saturated with plant food. Very rew of them are potted in earth. 
The “curtain vine’ that grows on the rafters has no roots that take 
food from soil. Its food is taken in through the feeding roots that 
form a curtain across the house, roots from 20 to 30 feet long. 
Many of the species in this house belong to the Aeroid, the Lily, 
and the Aralia families. The greater number, however, belong to the 
Bromeliaceae, the family to which the pineapple of commerce belongs. 
The only member of this family native to our part of the world is the 
so-called “Spanish moss’ or “long moss” that forms hanging tufts 
on the branches of trees in the southern part of the country. The com- 
mon pineapple is one of the very few members of the family that get 
pie oe from the soil—practically all the other species are epiphytic 
in habit. 
Many visitors ask whether the plants in this house can be grown 
as house plants in the home. Very few of them can be so grown. 
