C. nobilior amaliae J.A.D.Resende 2012052901

C. nobilior amaliae J.A.D.Resende 2012052901, a photo by saoriH on Flickr.

A close relative of walkeriana.

Epidendrum veroscriptum update

On Dec 2 I posted the buds just starting to emerge. The shot below shows the progress. This should be fun to watch.

On the varmint front, I lost another new lead last night, this one on a Cattleya purpurata. I am now 100% certain I have a mouse problem. Last night I put out two traps with baits; this morning the baits were gone - but no mouse. I then looked at the traps and immediately knew I had set them incorrectly. I re-set them properly. I am feeling confident that I will be rodent free by tomorrow morning.

Plant damage

One of my Aussie Dendrobium seedlings had the newest growth chomped and I lost two growing leads from a Cattleya lueddemanniana. If these losses don't immediately stimulate new leads to break then these plants will be set back by many, many months. I have also lost several growing root tips on a number of plants. I don't know if these losses are from snails/slugs or mice - I have seen evidence for both and will try to eliminate these critters ASAP. These newest losses took place after I had already applied Sluggo, but since the stuff doesn't act instantaneously that alone does not rule out snails/slugs as the culprit.

Cattleya walkeriana Gardner - var. semi-alba

Cattleya walkeriana Gardner - var. semi-alba, a photo by Mauro Rosim on Flickr.

Cattleya intermedia 'Irrorata'

Cattleya intermedia 'Irrorata', a photo by Mauro Rosim on Flickr.

This species has many color forms. This is one of the more unusual ones. Very nice.

A bench of blooming purpuratas

DSCF0591(1), a photo by Ori Sayuri on Flickr.

Epidendrum bifalce 'Sycamore Creek' CBR/AOS

Epidendrum bifalce 'Sycamore Creek' CBR/AOS , a photo by cieneguitan on Flickr.

A very impressive Epi! Wow.

Laelia anceps var. disciplinata (lineata striata)

Laelia anceps var. disciplinata (lineata striata), a photo by voorchid on Flickr.

A very nice variety of anceps.

C. gaskelliana

This seedling from Tropical Orchid Farm started pushing out some new roots.  It was hard to evaluate the roots and state of the bark to determine whether to leave it for another year or re-pot. After taking the plant out of the pot it was apparent root health was excellent and the bark was still nice and hard with little decomposition (pic below). But at that point it was going to be difficult to get it back into its pot so I just decided to repot into an Aircone 4" pot with medium orchiata and a bit of styrofoam peanuts in the bottom - my new standard potting strategy for most plants. I hope to have all the small and moderate sized plants currently in baskets into pots by the end the next growing season, with baskets being reserved for large plants. In our hot, dry summers I think this will facilitate keeping more plants well-hydrated.

Cattleya dowiana

I will not be trying this species - too tough to grow well in my conditions.

Laelia anceps in tree

Laelia anceps in tree, a photo by cbbxj69675 on Flickr.

Those fortunate growers in Southern California can use orchids in landscaping.

Exposição de Laelia purpurata 2012

Exposição de Laelia purpurata 2012, a set by Luiz Filipe Varella on Flickr.

It is purpurata season in the Southern Hemisphere. Here is a set of photos from a recent show in Brazil.

Flickr orchid pics

I have been collecting up some Flickr photostreams from orchid growers.  There are tons are great pics from great growers I can share when I have nothing to post from my own efforts. Here is Laelia praestans alba.

Now THAT is a Cattleya

C. labiata - better pic

Cattleya labiata rubra

These have just opened - they'll probably improve a bit over the next couple of days.

Cattleya encounters cat; cat wins

The Rock Lily Man

When I first started growing orchids I bought and killed a wonderful Dendrobium falcorostrum I acquired from Andy's Orchids during my very first trip to the Pacific Orchid Exposition in 2005. This started a brief fixation with Australian Dendrobiums. I  soon thereafter bought on ebay (and eventually killed) three or four Dendrobium kingianum, a Dendrobium speciosum and a couple of primary hybrids. For all these plants the decline was long, slow and quite obvious. It was then that my dalliance with the Australian Dendrobiums came to an end. This was the realization that pushed me more strongly towards Cattleyas. In principle the Aussie Dens are terrific plants for my neck of the woods. They can deal with high and low temps, have fragrant flowers and bloom off old canes. What's not to like? But I killed them all - every single one. Now with several years of experience and improved growing conditions I am gingerly wading in to try Aussie Dens again.

Fred Clarke the owner of Sunset Valley Orchids is one of my enablers. I buy plants from him even when I know I shouldn't be acquiring new things. When I stopped by his booth at the 2012 POE one of his employees was raving about the Aussie Dens. I bought one Encyclia Orchid Jungle and walked away, proud of my willpower, and forgot all about it. Fred recently put some Cattleya divisions for sale up on his site and I decided to buy one. I wandered over to the Aussie Dens part of the site and I found myself tempted. After negotiating with myself for a while I decided to buy a few Dendrobiums from Fred, including a couple of Dendrobium speciosum seedlings.

This species is known as the Rock Lily down under. While doing research on these plants (there are several good resources out there, all Australian) I came across a wonderful website from Gerry Walsh - all about D. speciosum. You will enjoy perusing it.

Now if only I could find D. falcorostrum for sale...
 

Laelia anceps spikes

This plant has four spikes this year.  Overall it looks to be my best anceps year so far. In addition to this plant, one plant has one spike, another has 2 and a third has seven. Plus my L. gouldiana has a spike as well.

Epidendrum veroscriptum buds

Well, this is looking very promising. The other new growth also has buds.

C. Callistoglossa doing well

I re-potted this large plant a couple of months ago.  Since then the pseudobulbs have been fairly shriveled.  I knew it had been putting out lots of new roots but it wasn't getting enough water.  Over the last two weeks all of a sudden the bulbs all plumped up, indicating the plant is happy. The pic shows the meaty bulbs on this large plant. I am growing my plants with C. warscewiczii ancestry indoors this winter under lights.  The same for my C. warneri.

C. labiata rubra buds

This plant has five buds on two stems - it will be a first bloom. It is doing well in a 6" wood basket. Its sibling bloomed last year but will not bloom this year as it suffered a setback when I moved it from a plastic basket to a pot.  However, it is now growing very well.

Use of methanol in plant feeding

A very interesting document.

New labiata looks a little better

The shape of the flower improved. Still looking for more improvement (and of course more flowers) next year.

Grow area

Compared to last year I have significantly more pots which means I can fit almost everything on the benches (many more plants were hanging last year). This is good because when watering hanging baskets it is difficult to control the amount of water falling on plants underneath. You can see some of my supplemental lighting on the left - still working on that and getting some more. Also you can see my oil-filled space heater - this is controlled by a Lux WIN100 thermostat.

A little bookkeeping

I found my old grow list from Fall 2009. I will update it when I have some more time. I was curious to see how many of the Cattleya and Laelia species plants I had at the time are still alive.  According to the list I had 64 plants. Of these, I gave away two and 23 are dead. I lose plants much less frequently these days.

Cattleya labiata first bloom

This is a seedling I imported from Bela Vista Orchids. It is still small and frankly I was shocked it decided to put out a flower (just one). The shape is poor, not surprising for a first bloom from an immature plant. The color is very nice. We'll see how it looks next year.

Cattleya labiata

This is the plant that I moved from a basket to a pot this summer.