The treatment which we find to suit this plant is to grow it in a basket suspended from the roof, where it procures a good amount of light, being merely shaded in summer when the sun is hot. It does best at the coolest end of the East Indian house. We have also cultivated it in a pot with good drainage and sphagnum moss; it requires a moderate supply of water in summer, but in winter only just sufficient should be given to moisten the moss.
Watering Orchids.—There can be no doubt that Orchids, like other plants, are particular as to the fluids given to them to nourish their roots. We often hear growers say, that the water obtainable in the particular locality where they may reside is hard, and that their plants do not thrive as they should do. We can fully sympathise with these men, as we know that hard water is bad for Orchids as well as for other plants. Hardwooded plants especially will not thrive if the water they receive does not suit them; but it must be borne in mind that these plants have fine hair-like roots, and are much sooner killed than Orchids which have thick fleshy roots. When conversing the other day with an Orchid grower from the north of England, who said that his plants were not doing well, that he could not keep the sphagnum moss alive—which he attributed to the use of hard water—and that he consequently put up a cistern for rain-water, and employed that, we were not surprised to hear that the result had been to improve the health of the plants, and that the moss was now growing luxuriantly.
There is a great difference between different hard waters; some contain a quantity of iron, while others contain lime; these when used for syringing leave white marks upon the foliage. We believe water containing chalk and lime to be beneficial to some kinds of Orchids, especially Cypripediums; in fact, some growers use chalk or broken limestone mixed with charcoal and peat to grow them in, and they succeed very well in it. We have frequently seen distinct traces of lime on imported Cypripediums. An importation of Cypripedium Spicerianum, received some time ago, was literally covered with lime deposit, probably owing to the plants having been found growing in the fissures of limestone rocks, where the water trickled down upon them. We should think that water containing iron would be the most injurious to Orchids.
PL. 60. LÆLIA PERRINII.
LÆLIA PERRINII.
[[Plate 60].]
Native of Brazil.
Epiphytal. Pseudobulbs (stems) club-shaped, under a foot in height, becoming furrowed when old. Leaves solitary, oblong-obtuse, about as long as the stems, coriaceous, of a dark green colour. Spathes oblong, compressed, green, often tinged with purple. Scape two-flowered, purplish. Flowers large, about six inches in expansion, richly coloured; sepals linear-oblong, bluntish, the lateral ones falcate, of a diluted magenta-rose; petals broader, oblong-lanceolate, of the same colour as the sepals; lip oblong-lanceolate, three-lobed, unguiculate, the base forming an inflated fistular cavity, the lateral lobes erect, acute, convergent over the column, the middle lip elongate, oblong-obtuse, wavy at the margin, the basal portion white inside, washed externally with magenta, the front part of an intense velvety purple-crimson. Pollen-masses eight.
Lælia Perrinii, Lindley, Botanical Register, 1842, under t. 62; Paxton’s Magazine of Botany, xiii., 5; Williams, Orchid Grower’s Manual, 5 ed., 207.
Cattleya Perrinii, Lindley, Botanical Register, 1838, t. 2; Hastingen, Paradisus Vindobonensis, i., t. 10.
Bletia Perrinii, Reichenbach fil., in Walpers’ Annales Botanices Systematicæ, vi., 421.
The Lælia Perrinii is a very old species, and one that nearly all Orchid growers have seen or had in their possession, but we do not consider it too ancient to be introduced to the notice of our subscribers. It is a useful acquisition to the Orchid house, as it flowers when there are few Lælias, or any other Orchids in bloom. There are several varieties of this Lælia, which vary in colour, some being much paler than others. The form we here illustrate is part of an importation we received a few years ago, many of which bore blossoms of the same colour as that here represented. A pure white variety also came from the same locality at the same time, but the latter is very rare, there being only a few plants in this country. The white-flowered forms seem to be making their appearance in many of the species of Lælia and Cattleya. We are glad to notice this, as they make a very pretty contrast with the dark-coloured flowers, of which we have so many in these two genera—genera which resemble each other very closely, the only tangible difference being in the number of pollen-masses.