. Florists' review [microform]. Floriculture. 14 The Weekly Florists^ Review^ Apbil 18, SEASONABLE NOTES. Orchids from Seed. Spring is the season par excellence for sowing orchid seeds. March, April and May are the best months. During winter they do not start well, and dur- ing the hot summer months the per- centage of germinations is much less than in spring. The prevailing idea that it is difficult to raise orchids from seeds has been long ago exploded. Of course, they cannot be raised in the ifame easy manner as asters, salvias and stocks, or even begonias and gloxinias. The raising
. Florists' review [microform]. Floriculture. 14 The Weekly Florists^ Review^ Apbil 18, SEASONABLE NOTES. Orchids from Seed. Spring is the season par excellence for sowing orchid seeds. March, April and May are the best months. During winter they do not start well, and dur- ing the hot summer months the per- centage of germinations is much less than in spring. The prevailing idea that it is difficult to raise orchids from seeds has been long ago exploded. Of course, they cannot be raised in the ifame easy manner as asters, salvias and stocks, or even begonias and gloxinias. The raising of seedling orchids in Europe has now become a tremendous industry and the leading orchid firms there carry in stock far more hybrids than forest-collected plants. Dozens of houses are devoted to seedling rais- ing, and the seedling plants are offered for sale in large numbers before flower- ing, the • parentage, of course, being given. The need of raising seedlings is becoming each year more apparent, as the forest supplies of orchids are by no means inexhaustible, and in the case of the popular Cattleya labiata, unless new localities are discovered where it is to be found in abundance, a few years will probably see it practically prohibi- tive in price. Merits of Home-Raised Hybrids. There is one good feature about or- chids raised from seed at home; they have greater vigor than the collected plants, provided, of course, that care is t%ken in selecting vigorous seed-produc- ing parents, which also are floriferous. Again, the home-raised hybrids in many cases make two growths and produce two crops of flowers a year, and do not need any resting period, as the forest plants do. Of course, this resting period, even in the case of collected plants, is liable to be overdone, and some growers are coming to the conclu- sion that under artificial "cultivation there is not so much need to rest the plants as had been popularly supposed. Then, again, many of these hybrids give us
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