ORCHID CULTURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21940, 29 April 1933, Page 2

ORCHID CULTURE

The popular belief that orchids are difficult to be grown and that they require great heat, has not yet died out. Though the flowers are admired and admitted to be extremely attractive — often replete with perfumes of the most refreshing and delicate kind—yet, even in this present age, there are many that hesitate to undertake their cultivation (writes B. N. Ghose in the Garden Lover). Orchid culture is still looked upon as a privilege of the rich; as the high price of the plants and the heat required for their cultivation are beyond the reach of the ordinary man. It is, however, hot always necessary to cultivate orchids in heat, for they abound not only in the tropical forests, but also in the temperate as well as in the alpine regions where vegetation has to struggle on in a rigorous climate. Those coming froin tropical regions should be grown in a stovehouse, and those from the temperate localities in a coolhouse.

Thus one can see that orchids can be grown in cool as well as hot climates, and that a range of glasshouses is ' not essentially necessary. One should select orchids suitable to the climate prevailing in his country. In forming a collection, one should choose the best known and the most easily grown kinds. They are now so cheap and the facilities offered by parcels post are so great that on can obtain a good collection for a few shillings from foreign countries. In the tropics, orchids with rich colours and varied forms arc found on trees or on moss-covered rocks. During the rains for several months at least, they are drenched with water and the atmosphere that surrounds them is hot and saturated with moisture. At this season they grow very fast, through the countless millions of breathing pores, they exhale the evaporable matter and inhale carbon and other gases and transform them into plant food, which is distributed to all parts to form the body of the plant. In the tropics they carry on their active growth throughout the autumn and winter —as the temperature is warm and the moisturh slowly emanating from the soil covered with wood greatly contributes to. their wellbeing. But during summer the fierce heat of the tropical sun robs the soil of all moisture. They are then destined to be exposed for many months' to the dry heat, without the possibility of obtaining any supply of watery food. Nature has obviously contributed to their power of thus resisting heat and drought. The spongy roots, turn white and no longer suck water; there is a cessation of growth and diminished transpiration through the breathing pores, on account of their losing thqir leaves and thus, diminishing their evaporative surface. The cuticle of the persistent leaves becomes thick and tough and the liquid substances themselves turn thick and slimy, thus allow-

ing only a very minute quantity to pass away with extreme slowness. In fact, the stem acquires all the characteristic of a bulb and hence it is called a pseudo bulb.

In the temperate regions, where the cold is severe, orchids rest during winter and their season of growth is summer and autumn. The period of rest is more prolonged in the alpine regions, where on the approach of winter orchids lose their leaves and stems and the fleshy tubers bury themselves deep in the ground. There, perennial vegetation would altogether be wiped out if it were not for the copious reservoir of nutritive matter contained in the thick roots, which, on account of their succulent nature, are capable of retaining their activities during the long and severe winter. They push forth their leaves and flowers on the advent of the first summer rains from the fleshy underground roots. The gorgeous Cypripediums, the showy Satyriums, the scented Habernarias, the ornamental Orchises, the beautiful Calanthe alpina, and even the Pleione Hookeriana that welcomes the weary traveller under the shade of the trees in which they grow have all this characteristic of losing their leaves and burying their tubers deep in the ground or in the moss-covered stems of trees. The snow and the moss furnish, as it were, the necessary blanket for the winter, season. ,: