Orchid of the day: Aerangis luteo-alba var. rhodosticta

Aerangis luteo-alba var. rhodosticta

Greetings friends! It has been a quiet few weeks, a combination of Summer hiatus as well as distractions of daily life. But I'm back now with beautiful updates of our home grown orchids. But first, let me share a nice picture of our orchids enjoying the Baltimore Summer.

A) Orchids hanging outside enjoying the breeze and sunlight of this summer.

Enough reminiscing about the Summer that has past. It is Fall now and let's enjoy this colorful season of the year. First up, our gorgeous Aerangis luteo-alba var. rhodostica.

In mid September this orchid developed two flower stems but unfortunately, due to the delicate nature, one of the stems broke while being handled. Much to Arne's dismay but the orchid is doing well.

B) September 13, 2015. One of the developing flower stem. No flower buds quite visible at this time.

C) By September 26, we can see distinct buds.

Here's a little story that Arne put together:-

We got our Aerangis luteo-alba rhodosticta in August 2014.  I knew it was supposedly very difficult to culture but it produced four flower stems with cascades of flowers as posted on this blog in February of 2015  According to me, the flowers were beautiful but disappointingly small in comparison to some pictures I had seen.

In May of 2015, the little Aerangis started to grow profusely.  This is when I realized one of the reasons why it is considered a difficult orchid.  The tip of the new leaves turned black and I first thought it was rot, which would have been really bad.  Later I understood that the tip of those leaves were about an inch too close to the fluorescent lights.  I have it hanging from a chain so it was easy for me to just move it down from the light a bit. 

In August it produced two flower stems.  This is when I realized how frail these stems are.  When I moved the orchids around, one of the flower stems broke totally when a leaf of another plant touched it.  Now I just hoped that the single flower stem left wouldn’t disappoint me further.  It didn’t!  This time the flowers are huge compared to before.  The largest of the flowers is close to 2 inches and there are 11 of them.  Their shape is also much better.  This is a wonderful little orchid, simply.~ Arne.

D) October 18th, most of the flowers are happily opened and larger than they were in February.

E) The orchid today.

F) Another photo of our Aerangis luteo-alba var. rhodostica with our adorable dog, Marcus Anthony.

Did I mentioned that we now have more orchids and extra lights and shelves? We are making more space in our little basement. How we'll manage, I have no idea but at least the basement will get organized!  Well I'll keep you posted!