Orchid of the day: Leptotes bicolor

As promised, we have orchids in bloom in the house! I had to wait before posting this. It was like waiting for the birth of a child! Leptotes bicolor has been in Arne's life since 2000 when he moved from Stockholm, Sweden, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is still growing on the same bark and is happy to bloom every year. I managed to get Arne to write a paragraph about his Leptotes bicolor. I think I have inspired him join in the blog. Let's see how this will progress!

A) This photo was taken in April 2007.

B) This is the usual residence of Leptotes bicolor all year round. In our study window.

"Leptotes bicolor is the oldest orchid in my collection. After I arrived in Baton Rouge in September 2000, I realized I needed to start my orchid hobby again from scratch. At the time there was a web-site called Linda’s orchid page, or something similar, where Linda presented her collection, gave advice and suggested the best vendors etc. Her awarded site was very helpful, especially to growers in the US, so I looked up one of the vendors that had Leptotes bicolor for sale. Being in Louisiana I found it quite ironic that the first orchid grower I was talking to was the New York based company J & B Orchids. The gentleman at J & B was very nice and I ordered my Leptotes bicolor and many more orchids from them after that. Unfortunately, I don’t think the company exists anymore.

Leptotes bicolor is a highly epiphytic orchid from Brazil so I ordered a cork bark slab together with a plant so that I could mount it immediately. The plant has been growing on the same slab for 14 years and I don’t see any reason to change anything within two or three years from now. This year it will have 33 flowers. It needs bright light but not hot sun light. Normally, the advice is bright light but not direct sun, which leaves most growers helpless. It is all about the heat generated by the light and that should be avoided. If mounted, the plant can be watered every other day and it will love it ." (by Arne)

C) I started to photo document when buds would appear and waited to post until they started to bloom. Photos C & D were taken February 16th, 2014. Notice how tiny buds are peeking through the leaves at this stage.

D) Doesn't look like much at that time. We weren't even sure of how many flowers would come out.

E) About 1 month later, March 12th, 2014, some of the buds broke open into flowers.

F) Today, March 16th, 2014, all but nine of the 33 buds bloomed into flowers. I hang it against the wall for a better photo!

G) Close up of this beautiful, miniature cool to hot growing epiphyte originating from Southern Brazil and Paraguay. Did you know that the seed pods from this orchid are used for flavoring ice cream in Brazil? The Brazilian extracts this plant's fruit capsules and use them for flavoring like vanilla. Vanilla extracts that we use in our cooking comes from other orchid genus, Vanilla.

Hope you enjoyed this posting. I certainly did. It was a wait worth waiting for! Until the next posting, Happy St. Patricks!

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Update below:

Here's the latest photo of our Leptotes bicolor. Today is April 7th and the flowers are still going strong. Although there are clear signs of wilting now.