Orchid of the day: Encyclia mariae

Encyclia mariae

On February 2nd, I posted about our Encyclia mariae which at that time produced a single inflorescence with 3 flowers. But now, there are two inflorescences and each with four flowers. However not all of the flowers are well developed. Arne contributed to this blog by writing a 'little' piece about his experience and knowledge about this orchid. At one point, he was considering taking this particular orchid to Washington DC for evaluation. But because of the imperfections of some of the blooms, he decided not to do so. He selected another instead. That would be our next post, with interesting outcome!

A) May 18th, 2 flowers stalks emerged from the leaves.

B) Close up of both flower stalks in (A), above.

C) By June 7th, the inflorescences developed into 4 clear flowers in each stalk.

D) Another angle of the two stalks.

E) June 14th, the flowers began to open up.

F) June 20th. Most of the flowers have opened up.

G) Up close of the individual flowers.

Below is the piece Arne put together for this post on Encyclia mariae. Do enjoy his insight!

"They say the best things in life are free.  For instance, our dog Anthony is a rescue and he turned out to be the best friend we could wish for.  Our Encyclia mariae is actually also something of a rescue.  Almost exactly three years ago today, I walked into a local gardening place that always has some orchids in a corner of their greenhouse.  Some of the orchids are just the average ones you will find anywhere but they always have a few very interesting species or hybrids.  This time I saw an Encyclia mariae with four flowers on two flower stems nicely mounted on a piece of teak.  I always wanted to have this particular species because the flowers are so beautiful and different and almost oversized for the little plant.

 But according to what I had read from the time I started culturing orchids in Sweden, this plant was considered difficult because it needed cool and humid conditions and would rot immediately if given too much water during winter.  So I didn’t buy the plant that day.  I couldn’t forget the plant though and I was continuously thinking that no one would buy it, especially not if the flowers started to wilt.  A month later I happened to drive by the gardening store again and I couldn’t help myself so I walked back into the greenhouse to check if the plant was still there.  I was right; no one had bought the plant and all the five flowers had now wilted.  The price had also been reduced to almost nothing and the sales person explained to me that I probably didn’t want to buy this orchid because I couldn’t expect any flowers on the plant anymore.  When I told him that I definitely was going to buy the plant I realized how much care he had spent on this particular orchid.  Maybe he even planned to take it home.  I brought it home and mounted it better on cork (more crevices for the roots) and put it in our orchidarium in the basement.  The plant grew without any problem whatsoever.  I followed the instructions and gave it a dry winter rest for almost five months (maybe I watered it twice during winter) and the next year it flowered again.  This year it awarded me with eight flowers (although one flower is deformed).

I don’t think Encyclia mariae is a difficult orchid to grow.  As always, it is different maybe, but if you know what it wants it grows and flowers nicely.  One more thing, Encyclia mariae got its name from a Swedish engineer that worked for the telephone company Ericsson (at the time called LM Ericsson) in Mexico, who named it after his wife Marie ӧstlund in the early 1900’s." By Arne Schon.