Cymbidium - They Break All Orchid Rules!The cymbidium orchid has 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 from the warmest to the lowest haven't injured them. These particular type of orchid 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. In short, this kind of Orchid Is Fierce! 
It is little wonder that cymbidium-orchids 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. It's been said that some specimen of this plant (or flower) 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 the indeed is this type of plant. Where you can grow, outdoors, azaleas and rhododendrons from inner China and upper Burma, you often can grow this particular orchid plant. 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-orchid. It's smaller size and more fascinating blend of colors probably made you think it was something new in the way of orchids. On the contrary, these orchids 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. This flower is an evergreen terrestrial. Some botanists have described them as semi-epiphytes because many are found growing above the ground on the dead stumps of 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, strap-like 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. More about The Orchids Coming Soon!
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