Cymbidiums have broken every rule of orchid culture. They are grown equally well in greenhouses in the North, lath houses and open gardens in the South. Temperatures as low as 18° F. for limited periods and as high as lio° F. haven't injured them. They are grown successfully in elaborately formulated composts, leafmold, common garden soil, and plain adobe. They have been fertilized with liquid manures or mulched with its barnyard equivalent. They have been fed diluted commercial concentrates, nutrient solutions, or nothing but water, and have accepted any or all of these attentions with equanimity.

It is little wonder that cymbidiums early became a fad with European gardeners and have increased steadily in popularity until today they are common garden plants in most subtropical areas. Even in northern states they have proved themselves to be useful conservatory and house plants. No other orchid has been grown so easily or so successfully away from the customary protection of greenhouses. No other orchid produces so many flowers year after year under such unexacting conditions.

Few gardeners in the Pacific Southwest have not heard of cymbidiums or do not own a plant or two. They have taken advantage of the many oak trees and the perfect growing conditions they offer—the filtered sunlight and the cooler air nearly always found beneath oaks. In well-planned gardens you'll nearly always find a raised bed or a shaded rockery under an oak tree. Nearly always you'll find some cymbidiums, along with maidenhair fern, cool cypripedi-ums, bilbergias, epidendrums in variety, and ginger in profusion. Some specimen plants have produced six hundred and more flowers in a single season.

Orchids that flourish under such extreme and variable conditions must be truly the amateur's flower—and that cymbidiums definitely are. As Hugh Evans, California's authority on outdoor orchids, once remarked, "Cymbidiums are less difficult to grow in our gardens than gardenias, azaleas, rhododendrons, and tuberous begonias." Although Mr. Evans spoke primarily for the West, his words are just as applicable to a large portion of the East and South. Where you can grow, outdoors, azaleas and rhododendrons from inner China and upper Burma, you often can grow cymbidiums.

What are cymbidiums, if they are so easy to grow? Well, there's no plant quite like them. The chances are now five-to-one that the orchid you saw in a florist's window between the months of November and May was not a cattleya, but a cymbidium. Its smaller size and more fascinating blend of colors probably made you think it was something new in the way of orchids. On the contrary, cymbidiums are old inhabitants of European houses and gardens but are only now coming into their own as a gayer, more useful, and better-lasting orchid than any you've seen or had before.

Their name means "boat," in reference to the fanciful and somewhat obscure resemblance between their lips and the keels of old sailing vessels. They were introduced to Europe in 1786 when Cymbidium aloifolium, a pretty dwarf variety with small flowers, was shipped there from the Indian hills. It didn't create much excitement, except that it was found to be hardy outdoors and was useful as a cold-frame subject.

Not until a hundred years later when Cymbidium ebur-neum, with five-inch white flowers, and Cymbidium lowi-anum—whose stalks bore twenty large green flowers lasting ten to twelve weeks on the plants—were discovered in the higher mountains of the Himalayas, did orchidists suddenly develop an extraordinary enthusiasm for them. Since that time about thirty species have been identified, but only ten have been used to produce the prolific and beautiful hybrids known today.

Orchidists at first thought cymbidiums tricky to grow. But the most eminent botanist of the nineteenth century, Sir Joseph Hooker, reported in his Himalayan Journal that he had found "cymbidiums . . . freely exposed to sun and wind, dews and frost, rain and droughts [and] they all were fresh, bright green, and strong." Gibson later confirmed this by taking temperature readings on the KMllong Rock of the Khasia Hills, where so many cymbidiums were found. The nightly temperatures in January and February consistently dropped to 32° or less. So orchidists took cymbidiums out of greenhouses between the period from spring frosts to autumn frosts and found them to be the least temperamental of orchids, benefiting greatly from their summer vacations outdoors.

Cymbidiums are evergreen terrestrials. Some botanists have described them as semi-epiphytes because many art found growing above the ground on the dead stumps ot trees. But no matter how high above soil level they grow— rarely more than four feet—their roots are deeply buried in masses of decaying vegetation. In swamps their roots are always in the ground. Their long, straplike foliage—generally several feet high—is gently arched from the tops of thick, sturdy pseudobulbs. It is from the base of new pseudobulbs that flower stalks develop in midsummer and grow during the next six months to three or four feet in height. On these stalks ten to forty large flowers will burst open between December and the following June. Every color and every combination is found in these four-inch to six-inch flowers, except blue.

The limiting consideration in growing cymbidiums outdoors is frost. You cannot have outdoor plantings if you have frost for more than several days at a time or for longer than a combined total of two weeks. If this amount of frost is exceeded you can make summer plantings of cymbidiums but must winter them indoors or in glass structures.

It doesn't seem to matter, either, whether indoors means a nice southerly window of some home, a hotbed, or a greenhouse. It is now reasonably well established that flower buds on cymbidiums are set in June and July by exposure to a goodly amount of sunlight, highly variable temperature between day and night (20° to 40° difference), and considerable drought (withholding water for four to six weeks). Then, come anything or high water, cymbidiums will bloom if kept at a temperature of not less than 32° for the balance of the winter. There is an exception: Cymbidiums won't flower in some parts of Florida—the night air is too warm. A few cymbidiums are shy bloomers though no one knows why. When you purchase cymbidiums be certain that they have bloomed before.

The second consideration is light. Cymbidiums require not less than 50 per cent of the available sunlight in summer and more, if possible, during winter. Large shade trees are, no doubt, the best means of naturally regulating shade. However, lath houses, muslin and cloth houses, and shaded terraces have served effectively.

The third consideration is the soil or compost. While cymbidiums have been grown in a multitude of soil mixtures, they have a definite preference for leafmold. The best formula seems to be one using equal parts of leafmold and leafsoil, which is often called "mountain soil," and enough gravel or decomposed granite to keep the compost from later becoming packed.

There is no question that most failures with cymbidiums come in part from giving them too little sunlight and in part from poor drainage. The latter condition must be carefully watched at all times. In their native India and Indo-China, cymbidiums are most likely to be found growing on small mounds of vegetation, on dead tree stumps and rocks. In effect, they are found in situations with good natural drainage. In artificial culture this is achieved by planting cymbidiums in raised beds six to twelve inches above the ground level. Sometimes the beds may be simply mounded, as done by the Dutch gardeners. The beds may be boarded in with planks or walled in with bricks and flagstones. A few western gardeners have insured rapid drainage by placing a few inches of small rock in the bottom of their cym-bidium beds, then filling in the compost. This is excellent insurance, but it is not necessary if the compost is expertly compounded.

The effect of manures and commercial fertilizers on cymbidiums is still somewhat speculative. Those who do feed their plants swear by the system. Often those who don't get as good results. The standard method is to incorporate very old manure with the compost, about one part manure to five parts compost. Some gardeners prefer to mulch their cymbidiums with an inch-thick top dressing of ground manure. The danger here is in letting the manure touch the pseudobulbs; it burns and rots them. Other gardeners use a liquid concentrate and hose-siphon it onto the bed each time they water. Whatever method you use, it must not be overdone. Two applications of ground manure as a mulch will take care of a year's growth. Liquid fertilizers are rarely applied oftener than once a month in summer and every two or three months in winter. Cymbidiums are never really dormant and can use more food than many orchids, but they are as sensitive to overdosage as are all other orchids.

Watering cymbidiums when planted outdoors is neither a problem nor a chore. Once or twice a month, at the most, during summer is enough. Just set a sprinkler near by and let it go until the soil is thoroughly wet to a depth of five or six inches. In winter the frequent rains take care of the problem for you. Probably it will never be necessary to water cymbidiums during the winter months. It doesn't matter, in a sense, how long the compost stays moist. Cymbidiums need continuous moisture. But every precaution should be taken to keep the compost from becoming soggy and dank. A neat trick is to add large and decorative rocks to the cymbidium beds. Bury them about three-quarters of their diameter into the ground. Cymbidiums need cool root runs, and large rocks provide that in summer; in winter, for some reason, such rocks help cymbidium roots cope with cold and excessive dampness.

So much for outdoor culture. Let's go on to pot, indoor, and greenhouse culture. The odds are heavily against your attempting to grow cymbidiums in the ground unless you live in a relatively frost-free area. Another reason: The plants are rather expensive, averaging about $30 for five-bulb propagations which are ready to bloom. It takes time to build up a collection of them at that price. In the long run, you'll have more fun, an easier time, and better control by growing one or two cymbidiums in pots. This method of culture is open to any gardener, no matter where he lives, how rigorous the climate, or how little or how much equipment he may have.

Cymbidiums will do better for you if they are potted in a compost, preferably of leafmold and gravel. Here, too, exist wide differences of opinion among experts and amateurs. Here also cymbidiums have proved themselves to be obligingly adaptable. They have been grown with equal facility in osmunda, pure leafmold, or plain soil, or in a multitude of combinations of these three composting materials. The only unsuccessful medium has been gravel. For some reason, cymbidiums have failed to respond to gravel techniques and nutrient solution cultures. In general, the latest trend in compost formulas is away from osmunda and toward simplified leafmold composts. Osmunda in the quantity needed is expensive. Also, cymbidium roots are injured easily by osmunda when repotting is necessary. Osmunda clings to the roots tenaciously and can't be sheared or pulled away without breaking the brittle, thick roots of cymbidiums.

Herein, incidentally, lies one of the two dangers of cymbidium culture. They suffer easily from shock. When too many roots are broken, or the plants are disturbed by repotting too frequently, they won't bloom for a year or two. It takes large masses of well-developed roots to keep them in health and to support blooming. For this reason, most growers are reluctant to pot cymbidiums more often than every three years.

The second danger in cymbidium culture is imperfect drainage. Water that stays in the bottom of pots will rot every root. Excessive water in the compost slows down and eventually stops root growth. Water on top of the compost will rot new leads and old pseudobulbs indiscriminately. Cymbidiums not correctly drained offer no resistance to the virulent rot, Erwinia carotovora, a bacterial organism that eats the heart out of pseudobulbs, leaving them soft, spongy, watery masses of dead tissues.

There is no cure once Erwinia gets started, and no one is certain how it does start. Occasionally, a large infected cymbidium can be cut to pieces with a sterile knife, the rotted bulbs and the one or two apparently healthy ones adjoining it being cut off and burned in an incinerator. The cuts on the healthy portion are smeared with thick, freshly made Bordeaux paste, dried for several days and then repainted with "tree-seal," dried, and the plant repotted. Even so, the chances of saving the plant are not good. The bacteria travel through the plant tissues far beyond the spots where their damage is visible.

The standard mixture of leafmold and gravel will suit cymbidiums better than more complex formulas. It provides them with several of the conditions they require: a soft compost, well drained and cool, and considerable organic nutrients released slowly from the decomposing leaf-mold. Some growers add small quantities of bone meal or cottonseed meal; others like to mix in a small handful of very old ground steer manure with each eight-inch pot of compost. The best results, however, have been obtained with commercial liquid fertilizers. A named-brand 10-10-8 formula diluted to the weakest recommended dilution and applied once a month has given many cymbidium fanciers spectacular and sturdy flowers. Nutrient solutions have been used, but at twice the recommended strength. They don't seem to have the push that cymbidiums require.

The selection of correct pot sizes for cymbidiums is rather important. In osmunda they are often overpotted; in leaf-mold composts they are underpotted. The depth of the pot, also, affects their health. Cymbidiums have not taken well to shallow pots and fern pans, which warm up too quickly. The best root growth has been obtained in standard deep clay flower pots with plenty of large rocks in the bottom to insure bottom drainage.

Rather than be too general, let's assume that you have bought a cymbidium with five bulbs and one new lead showing. You want to repot it; here's how you go about it. Knock the plant out of the pot it came in. If a compost was used, alternately shake the plant gently and brush the roots to get off loose particles of soil. Soil that won't come off in this manner can be hosed away later with a soft stream of water. Cymbidiums in osmunda require much more dexterity and care. A small pair of heavy shears is invaluable in cutting away the osmunda fibers. A pair of thick-bladed tweezers helps you pick out fibers from beneath the rhizome, where they so often wedge themselves. Get the roots scrupulously clean, but don't break them.

Remove all dead tissues and leaves from the upper portion of the plant. Dead tissue can sometimes be torn off cleanly by a quick jerk. Heavy foliage and sheathing must be clipped. Brush the pseudobulbs with a small, soft brush, sponging the leaves if necessary with a mild nicotine insecticide. You want to start with a clean plant, and cymbidi-ums are readily attacked by scale insects which hide beneath the dead tissues. Fortunately, scale is about the only pest that is found on cymbidiums; slugs and snails, of course, eat the flowers readily, but other garden pests ordinarily leave cymbidiums alone.

The chances are that the two oldest pseudobulbs will have no foliage. In that event, clip them off, remove their roots, and set them aside for propagations. The front portion of the plant is then measured for a pot. Often—though this is wrong as often as it is correct—three pseudobulbs and a lead will be roughly four inches in diameter. It can go in a pot two inches larger if you plan to use leafmold, three or four inches larger if you pot with osmunda. Try to allow for two years' uninterrupted growth in as small a pot as possible.

The technique of potting cymbidiums in leafmold composts and osmunda is identical to the methods explained earlier in Chapter 9. When using osmunda, remember that a little goes a long way. It is better to fill a pot half full with gravel or broken crocks. This cuts down on the amount of osmunda and offsets the increased size of the pot. Yet it permits the plant perfect freedom to expand for several years, and the osmunda doesn't stay murderously wet.

Under most conditions, cymbidiums are propagated and repotted in the spring or early summer just after they bloom. There is, however, an increasing trend on the Pacific Coast to propagate and repot cymbidiums in August and September just before they bloom. It is known that cymbidiums, disturbed by repotting before the flower buds are set, often will not develop flowering growths. Apparently the buds are changed to vegetative leads. On the other hand, plants propagated and repotted after the flower buds are initiated will bloom. Using this latter technique, a scientist at the University of California and a group of students under him obtained flowers from single pseudobulbs torn from the parent plant. Normally, this would be impracticable.

The propagation of cymbidiums varies a bit from the usual procedures. A single pseudobulb will produce new growth as easily as several or more attached bulbs. The catch is that the pseudobulbs must be thoroughly ripened and hardened. Newly formed pseudobulbs, even those three or four years old, if they possess foliage, will rarely succeed as propagations unless they already have a lead showing. In that case, the foliage is clipped back half way, the roots left on, and the pseudobulb and lead potted and carried on.

The best propagations are made from pseudobulbs three or more years old which have definitely and completely lost their foliage. They are cut away from the plants, cleaned, and set aside for a day or two to dry out in order that the wounded tissues won't pick up infections. A few growers like to daub the cut surfaces with a tree paint. Moist, coarse sand is an excellent medium on which to stand the pseudobulbs until growth appears; wet or damp sand is decidedly harmful. It is more important to have moist, warm air about the pseudobulbs than to have moist sand at their feet. One of the easiest methods of propagating cymbidiums, and a practicable one for amateurs, was introduced by a Pasadena grower. Each pseudobulb is placed in a small clay flower pot. The pot is placed on sand kept continuously wet, and covered with a glass pane or bell jar. This method has reduced materially the loss of pseudobulbs from bacterial rots.

As soon as a lead and roots appear, pot up the pseudobulbs. Place them in a slightly sunnier position and water carefully for several months. When growth is about ten inches high and small pseudobulbs begin to develop, they can be put with your other cymbidiums. The only unfortunate thing about these propagations is the time they take to develop. You'll have to wait from three to five years before they reach flowering size. Because of this, some amateurs never make propagations, but divide the plants. Sometimes this is difficult to do without having a spare pseudobulb or two left over. Cymbidiums tend to develop outward in a circle and don't break apart efficiently. However, start from the center and push the pseudobulbs away from each other. Watch which pseudobulbs seem to be attached to each other, and then make your cut to get the two largest sections you can.

When divided or repotted, cymbidiums often suffer from "shock," believed to be caused by "bleeding" from cut rhizomes and broken roots, as well as by the loss of sustaining back bulbs. Shock may prevent the plants from immediately developing new growth or from flowering. Western growers have overcome shock quite successfully by painting all cut surfaces (both roots and rhizomes) with tree-seal compounds.

Cymbidiums adapt themselves rather well to house culture, although their large size makes it impossible to place more than two or three in a window. Their eighteen-inch to two-foot leaves and large diameter are suited to extra large windows. A south window is almost a necessity for them owing to the larger amount of sunlight it can provide during dismal winter days. Fortunately, being terrestrials, their humidity requirement is low. They do poorly in dry, hot rooms, but no trays of water or moist gravel are ever really necessary. Nevertheless, they should be sponged or syringed when the air becomes too hot and dry. Cymbidiums, like the cool cypripediums and hardy epidendrums, require little attention and get along without elaborate structures or precautions, and they thus become a good candidate for one of your perfect plant house guests.

While large-flowered cymbidiums are pleasant to have if you have room for them, the best house plants are to be found with the species and hybrids having fewer and smaller flowers and less foliage. Some primary hybrids like Cym-bidium veitchii and the more complex progeny, such as Cymbidium swallow, Cymbidium sicily, and Cymbidium vesta album, never get out of bounds. There are three dwarf species attached to the family: Cymbidium aloifolium, Cymbidium dayanum,and Cymbidium devonianum. Their foliage rarely exceeds eighteen inches and the flowers are numerous, about one and one-half inches across and saucily colored.

It is wise to stay away from species in most cases, although Cymbidium insigne and Cymbidium lowianum are as nice as their hybrids and the former is as certain to bloom as any plant can ever be. Contrarily, Cymbidium tracyanum and Cymbidium giganteum are too large for indoor gardening. The former is a shy bloomer whose flowers don't last; the latter was named for its foliage, the flowers being the insignificant and muddy colored runts of the family.

No matter whether you grow cymbidiums in a window garden or a greenhouse, take them outdoors from spring to autumn. They will repay you for your thoughtfulness many times over in staying healthier and blooming more regularly. Unless you do this, they are sometimes slow to bloom in conservatories and windows owing to the little winter light they may receive. Give them a summer vacation for the same purpose that you take one. Cymbidiums are debilitated by the continuously high temperatures found in summer greenhouses and windows unless you have a good cooling system or provide plenty of fresh air. It makes them work too hard. After all, they come largely from elevations between 3,000 and 7,000 feet in the mountain ranges of southern Asia where the average high temperature is 80°. It gets higher than that, of course, but not for prolonged periods.

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