You may have confidence in yourself as a grower of begonias, or rare irises. You are sure of yourself with roses. But orchids—you speak of them with reverence and approach them with awe. You believe that their culture is hazardous, their expense tremendous, and the plants temperamental as prima donnas.

Not at all!

Orchids are among the easiest of plants to grow, the hardest to kill. They warn you before they become sick and indicate the necessary remedy. Generally they cost no more than good peonies and require less care than exhibition chrysanthemums. You can buy them any time of the year. Twelve well-chosen plants will give you blooms the year round. They are neither parasitic nor carnivorous and they do not live on air alone. Actually, they live, grow, and die much in the same manner as other, more common, garden plants.

Orchids need a continuous supply of fresh air, an occasional drenching with water, and plenty of light. They may be harmed by temperatures below 50° F.—but some can stand 32° and less. They are benefited by dry air in the morning and a bit of humidity during the day. Give orchids those simple conditions, to the extent and in the proportions they require, and you can grow them in Boston or Seattle, Florida, or the DaKMtas. You can do the work between sips of breakfast coffee or between cocktails and dinner. A word of warning, though: Orchid growing is a disease! Once you've seen an orchid plant, you'll want it. Once you've purchased one, you'll go without lunches to buy two more. That's the way the orchid bug bites you. There's no escaping it.

Since a vanilla plant was introduced to English gardeners in 1739, orchids have been the subject of tall tales of adventure and fabulous legends. Why? Well, the odd habits of growth of some orchids, the exotic countries from which they come, inadequate knowledge, and extravagant speculation were combined very early by romantic writers into a fantastic whole. But under the realistic appraisal of modern science, the orchid myth comes apart at its seams. For example: Orchid hunters have been pictured as daringly exploring steaming jungles, lost among dangerous savages and man-eating animals.

In reality, most orchids are as simple to find as they are easy to grow. The only hardships are the substitution of mules for automobiles, of sleeping bags for houses, and of wild animals—who are afraid of men—for the domestic varieties. Orchid hunters who have died in the field generally have succumbed to pneumonia from exposure, not to poisoned arrows. Head-hunters on the island of Borneo have been helpful to plant collectors and reticent about removing their heads. They believed botanists were crazy and therefore protected by powerful spirits.

Orchid hunting is a prosaic business operated by men who do not seek either personal or financial risks. There may be thrills, of course—exploring little-known mountains and valleys, climbing gigantic trees, scaling precipitous cliffs—but there is no danger greater than may be met in an ordinary hike in the Adirondacks or a jaunt through the Sierras.

One reason orchids have been misunderstood so long is that eighteenth-century scientists thoroughly misinterpreted their unusual habits of growth. As late as the year 1815, an editor of the Botanical Register quaintly called orchids "tropical parasites." The orchids of his day came largely from the West Indies and were brought as curiosities to England by British naval officers who described them as growing on trees. Well, so does mistletoe, a known parasite; thus, by an erroneous analogy, orchids were believed to be parasites also. None of these early naval men—including the famous Captain Bligh, of the Bounty, who collected orchids for Kew Gardens—observed that many of the roots of tree-growing orchids were always buried in deposits of decaying vegetation caught in the hollows and cavities of tree limbs. From such deposits orchids obtain their food. Orchid roots do not—and cannot—penetrate the bark of trees, as do mistletoe roots. They have no mechanism for obtaining nourishment from the sap.

Yet, it was not until 1922 that Dr. Lewis Knudsen of Cornell University delivered the death blow to the persistent belief that orchids are parasitical. He placed sterilized orchid seed in sterilized flasks containing sterilized nutrient gels and sugar. The seeds germinated and grew vigorously—more so than in their native habitat. One small plant was grown in flasks for seven years, finally blooming. Parasites require food ready-made for their use. They cannot make—as true, green plants do—complex organic foods from simple chemical nutrient elements.

As a matter of fact, not all orchids dwell on trees; many are terrestrial. The exquisite cymbidiums and exotic cypri-pediums grow in the ground much the same as do carnations and marigolds. For some orchids, trees only afford excellent growing conditions: fresher air, more sunlight, and protection from animals which eat the tasty, honey-spotted orchid buds.

Orchids are not carnivorous. This fable started in 1891 when an Australian explorer stumbled on dendrobiums growing in a native cemetery. Several graves had been washed out by torrential rains, exposing the skeletons. On one sun-bleached skull an orchid was growing. It was only an unusual coincidence in which an orchid, dislodged from a tree, happened to fall on a convenient object in a suitable place. But when news of the discovery reached Europe, every newspaper on the continent reprinted the story. The belief that orchids are carnivorous spread widely. Yet they are not related to any of the plants which devour insects. They have no floral trap that can imprison insects permanently and no fluid in which to digest them.

Another reason why orchids have been misunderstood is because the first orchids discovered and introduced came from the tropics—the so-called hot and humid countries. English gardeners, therefore, devised a hot treatment for orchids, without realizing that in tropical countries could be found climates as cold as that of Great Britain. They placed orchids in "stoves"—a diabolical combination of heavily painted glass, coal fires, and hot brick flues. The bricks were drenched continuously with water to produce a steamy atmosphere; there were no movable windows, and there was no ventilation. This was the beginning of the nefarious "hothouse-treatment" which has been so long and so unjustifiably associated with orchid culture.

Under such extreme treatment orchids succumbed by hundreds and thousands until, as Sir Joseph Hooker dryly suggested, England became the "grave of tropical orchids." Despite the rapidity with which orchids died, they were imported in larger and larger quantities. The startling beauty of the flowers on the few plants that temporarily survived stimulated the desire of hobbyists and jogged the cupidity of adventurers who saw an easy way to make a lot of money. At the rate orchids were imported, and perished, it seemed impossible that the supply could catch up with the demand.

As a result, some of the first orchid hunters, untrained in plant collecting, rushed off to South America and stripped many forests of their orchids. Trees were cut down rather than climbed. No attempt was made to differentiate between good and bad orchids; all were taken. None were left to re-establish themselves. Certain areas of Latin America have not had orchids since because of the greed that long ago sent reckless men hunting orchids. The blame, though, is not entirely on the original orchid collectors. Most of their depredations are insignificant compared to the ravages of later coffee planters who ùn-discriminatingly laid waste thousands of square miles of forests rich in orchid flora. How many wonderful plants were thus lost, no one will ever know.

Today, however, orchid exports are rigidly controlled. It is interesting to find that control started nearly a hundred years ago in Burma. Missionary priests tried to monopolize and conserve Burmese orchids. They refused collectors permission to search for plants, even confiscating plant cargoes of poachers. Unfortunately, this enforcement was stopped by the Bishop of Austria, who protested against mixing business with religion.

Orchids are not overly expensive. This belief also began during the early days of the orchid hysteria. Plants suffered irreparably from poor shipping facilities. Chopped from trees, carelessly packed, and stored in musty holds of sailing ships, orchids reached England in soggy masses. Yet, so strong was the demand that rotted and decayed plants were offered at sales. Merchants began to speculate in them, and great auctions were held in Liverpool and London. Prices soared until $500 for a single plant was not remarkable. The nearly top price of $2,000 was described as an investsftent. Famous hobbyists bid against each other in the hope of finding new species that might be tagged with their names, which they wanted perpetuated in botanical nomenclature. Eventually, shipping practices were improved, cultural methods perfected, and the orchid "bubble" burst. Then, as William Watson wrote in the 1881 edition of his Manual, orchids were "sold at a few shillings per dozen."

The price of orchids has gone up since, but not outrageously. Steven's Auction Rooms in London, before the First World War, considered a dollar a good price for run-of-the-mill cypripediums and cattleyas, although American buyers were paying a bit more. More recently, a modern orchid grower, Mrs. L. Sherman Adams, remarked that "many orchids (which require less care than geraniums) can be bought for only a few dollars each." If you wish, you can still pay $100 and $500 for a choice specimen; but that is the exception, not the rule.

Competition among nineteenth-century continental orchid hobbyists to grow their plants successfully was often violent and jealous. The few who, with patience, luck, or skill, stumbled upon the correct cultural conditions to keep their plants alive and flowering were regarded with envy out of all proportion to their achievements. Sometimes they kept their growing formulas secret in order to foster the respect of their less fortunate colleagues. This was unfortunate. It seemed to support the popular illusion that orchids were flowers of mystery. Actually, these hobbyists did not know themselves why they were successful. They had a "system" but they did not know the rules.

Clint UcDade & Sot

LAELIOCATTLEYA DERNA VAR. JEAN

However, the botanists who later followed and replaced the speculative plant collectors in the tropics were soundly trained in scientific techniques. They began to record exact data on orchids: their locations, how high above sea level they grew, prevailing temperatures and rainfall, and the amount of sunlight they received. Returning to Europe, these botanists published their collected information.

They protested vigorously against the unscientific treatment given orchids in cultivation. They pointed out the discrepancies between murky, overheated, unventilated greenhouses and the cool climate, the fresh air, and the abundant sunlight orchids received in their native countries. More often than not their protests were ignored, their notes buried in the archives of botanical museums. But the repetitious force of their arguments eventually forced recognition.

As a matter of history, the rules of orchid culture were laid down over a hundred years ago by Sir Joseph Paxton in his experimental English cottage garden. He was the first orchidist to break away from stoves. He kept his greenhouses cool, clean, open to air and sunlight. From his observations he formulated a set of rules which haven't changed a word or comma since, and demonstrated that by their application most orchids could be housebroken or garden-trained to suit the fancies of the wealthiest or poorest gardener.

Shortly after Paxton standardized orchid culture, Dr. John Lindley—then the dean of orchidists, who wrote much, and often ignorantly, about orchids—visited him and spoke later of the experience in wide-eyed incredulity: "The success with which they [orchids] are cultivated by Mr. Paxton is wonderful. The climate in which this is effected, instead of being so hot and damp that the plants can only be seen with as much discomfort as if one had to visit them in an Indian jungle, is as mild and delightful as that of Madeira." It must be admitted that Dr. Lindley never refused to acknowledge his errors. After all, he was. largely responsible for raising horticulture from an empirical art to a developed science.

Somewhat later, Benjamin Williams, a hardheaded andl practical nurseryman, looked over the subject of orchid culture, re-evaluated it, and produced a book, Orchids for the Millions! The millions didn't hear him, but the thousands did; and thousands more gardeners have rediscovered him from year to year with pleasant surprise. Again, in 1887, James Veitch, whose firm did more for orchid culture than any other single nursery, published two exhaustive volumes about orchids. These books have not been surpassed, and are still the bibles of orchidists fortunate enough to possess them. From that time on, orchid growers who were articulate and honest recorded their methods over and over again in the issues of the Gardeners' Chronicle and later in the Orchid Review. Conserved in the pages of the latter magazine there is now more than fifty-three years of hard-won knowledge. Enough knowledge to last all of us for a lifetime of orchid growing. But so firmly intrenched were the original malpractices and misconceptions that the emancipation from them has remained a tediously slow process to this day. As a famous horticulturist once replied to the explorer, Colonel William Benson, who pointed out that home-grown orchid flowers were dingy in comparison with native-grown flowers, "I never want to hear what orchids do in their native conditions-it only puts me out!"

If most of us can't see a tree because of the forest around it, it is not unlikely that we can't see an orchid because of the myths under which it seems to hide. However, day by day, in the back yard of dirt gardeners, in the small greenhouses of hobbyists, and in the laboratories of modern scientists, these myths are disappearing.

Up in Canada a lumberman grows orchids in a kitchen window. In New York a businessman and his wife keep orchids in an apartment window on pans of water set above a steam radiator. A real-estate broker in Pasadena plants them in an outdoor window box. A widow in Nashville protects them in a modified aquarium. A New Orleans gardener matures seedlings in a cold frame. A singing instructor in Los Angeles uses an electrically heated glass case. A famous scientist flowers orchids in his Ithaca, New York, garden during the summer and stores them in glass cases through the winter. A Swedish merchant-ship captain hangs orchids from his cabin skylight.

The methods of these amateurs are not orthodox horticulture. But they do indicate that, given some knowledge of what it takes to make orchids grow, even the most inexpert gardeners can obtain results and enjoyment from them. Just because it has been expedient to grow orchids in greenhouses is no reason why you can't have fun with them under home conditions.

More startling, though, than the achievements of these amateurs are the experiments in orchidology being made by scientists in university laboratories and in research institutions.

Dr. H. O. Eversole at La Canada, California, in 1934 pioneered what is now called the gravel technique of orchid culture. Using phalaenopsis plants as "guinea pigs" he placed seedlings in flats of gravel, fed them chemical nutrient solutions, and matured them in three years instead of the normal five years once believed necessary. He also proved the commercial possibilities of the method by installing concrete benches filled with quartz pebbles into which a nutrient solution is automatically pumped and drained. Chemi-culture orchids, if you please! Further proof that orchids are physiologically no different from ordinary plants, that they require the customary plant foods (air, water, mineral salts) and sunlight for growth and development.

Over in Pasadena in the laboratories of Lloyd C. Cosper, co-author of this book, cattleya seedlings were placed in clay garden pots filled with roofing gravel, fed a modified nutrient solution, and matured in four years—not the expected seven years. In 1936 he extended the method to a dozen other orchid species, all but two responding with increased growth and higher flower production. His plants had better foliage and sturdier flowers than those grown by traditional methods. For example, twenty-two small divisions of Laeliocattleya canhamiana, alba, started in 1940, produced four years later a total of 396 blooms in one season, an average of eighteen flowers per plant. There were more than 200 roots per plant, each root averaging forty inches in length. This number of roots per plant is not unknown in nature, but it is highly unusual in cultivation. It is desirable because the strength and productivity of orchids depend upon the strength and vigor of their root systems.

Apparently a great deal has been wrong with our preconceived notions of orchids. When they can be grown in kitchens or gardens, windows or greenhouses, their culture reaffirms the dictum of old Sir Joseph Paxton: Orchid growth is governed by strict laws; each cause has its visible effect. In cultivation, orchids demand five basic conditions as a preliminary. Give them those conditions and you will succeed; neglect them and you will fail. Yet orchids do not demand perfection, and they are indifferent to detail. Given half a chance, they will wait on the completion of your education.

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