Ochid of the day: Dendrobium jenkensii 2014

Today I'm posting about our Dendrobium jenkensii. I followed the progression from no flowers to buds and finally to blooming flowers. Right now there are four flowers and another four buds are coming through. I'll post an update when the remaining buds start to flower.

A) This photo was taken March 19th at the sign of the first few buds. You can barely see it.

B) By April 3rd, one of the four buds bloomed. When Arne got this orchid, another orchid was attached on the top. There are some small flowers occasionally but we can't quite say what it is!

C) A close up the photo above.

D) From the front, you can clearly see the two different plants attached to the bark. The lower plant being D. jenkensii. Some orchids are more vegetative than others, meaning they just don't produce any flowers at all. Yet we do see pods present from the orchid above. Any idea what it is?

E) By April 4th, all four flowers opened up.

F) Close up of the flowers in E (above).

G) This photo was taken April 12th. Finally I could get a clear picture of the four new buds. Unfortunately, I don't think the other flowers will last that long. Pity. It would have been really nice if all eight flowers were blooming together.

The paragraph below is Arne's contribution to my post for the day. He is writing about his adventure with Dendrobium jenkensii. It's a nice story and worth sharing. Enjoy!

"Dendrobium jenkensii and its bigger cousin Dendrobium lindleyi are rather easy to culture but probably among the most difficult of all orchids to get to flower. I bought a plant mounted nicely on a little stick from Andy’s Orchids several years ago and I gave it the treatment that supposedly would result in flowers. That meant a cooler winter rest with very little water. But no flowers were to be seen in Spring. I read more about these orchids again and according to the literature I had done nothing wrong so I gave it another year but not even a dried out flower bud emerged. 

Then I read an interesting article in the AOS Orchids magazine. According to the author, it was all about making these kind of orchids grow as much in the summer as possible with high humidity in a warm climate and then make the winter rest as different as possible except for the light that should be kept as intense as possible. So I put the plant in a Dogwood tree during the hot and humid Baltimore summer. That means 80 – 90°F or higher and a minimum of 70% relative humidity for three or four months during summer. Then I brought it in and put it in a cool window with a lot of light and I didn’t water it from October until the end of February. Then it flowered. Since then it has only flowered during the years I gave it the same or even worse winter treatments. The worse winter treatment the more flowers. Its bigger cousin Dendrobium lindleyi is even more difficult and so far it only flowered once in four years. I’m not sure it will flower this year." By Arne Schon.