Orchid of the day: Cattleya Trick or Treat

Cattleya Trick or Treat

A) Anthony with our orchid October 25th, 2015.

B) At this time we only had 1 flower in bloom. The rest were still buds, 6 in total.

C) A different angle.

D) By November 18th, five flowers were blooming and at least four buds in development.

E) The brilliant orange color of these flowers really shines brightly in the sun. 

F) The entire plant stands more than 2 feet tall in height.

G) November 29. Still waiting for the last three buds to open up. In total today, we have eight flowers in bloom.

H) Cattleya Trick or Treat today.

Orchid of the day: Brassavola nodosa

Brassavola nodosa

As promised, my new post today is another orchid of the genus, Brassavola, specifically, Brassavola nodosa, or as Arne calls it, the reluctant bloomer.

A) October 31st, four flower buds developed

This orchid is a native of Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, Venezuela, Colombia, Guyana and French Guinea. It is also known as "Lady of the night" because in early evenings, the flowers exude a citrus and gardenia-like fragrant. This fragrance is thought to attract moths for pollination, which is very likely.

B) By Nov. 1st, one of the buds opened. Normally we should have many more flowers but considering we wanted to 'dispose' of this specimen, this is a success!

C) Two beautifully shaped flowers, Nov. 7th.

D) To better capture the definition of these white flowers, we took the pictures outside with natural light. 

E) The span from petal tip to petal tip across is almost 4 inches across.

F) Our Brassavola nodosa tonight. All four flowers in full bloom and exuding a pleasant citrus fragrance.

I hope you have enjoyed the beauty of our reluctant bloomer. Who knows, it may produce even more flowers in the future. I'm certainly glad we kept this orchid around as Arne thought it was purely vegetative a year ago. Until my next post, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Orchid of the day: Brassavola perrinii

Brassavola perrinii

The species within Brassavola have cascades of mainly white flowers that are more or less fragrant.  The most well-known is Br. nodosa, or Lady of the Night, that emits a strong but pleasant fragrance especially during the night (next post).  Br. perrinii cannot compete when it comes to fragrance but, at least according to Arne, the flowers are superior in shape and the species as such is much more floriferous and a specimen plant is quite a sight.

A) October 31st, 2015

B) November 7th, 2015. 

This plant arrived a little more than a year ago.  It had long grass-like growths and the vendor told Arne that he had decided to ship them in pots rather than mounted because of their awkward shape.  Arne mounted it as soon as he could because these plants really do not like pots.  That process disturbed it quite much though and that is why it only has a few flowers this year.  But it had to be done and from now on it will grow fast. 

C) November 8th. We took this photo outside to get natural light.

D) In the grower's own hands. Beautiful specimen.

E) View from above.

F) Upclose

Lastly,

Orchid of the day: Cattleya Love Knot (and new lights!)

Cattleya Love Knot

Here is one of our Cattleya Love Knot orchid flowering again late in September this year. After we divided the single plant, the new divisions have been producing two flowers at a time. I hope both these new plants it will produce more flower stems soon. Both are doing very well.

This is very inspiring and Arne has invested in purchasing a brand new light. He is quite motivated and has written a little something about this. 

New Lights and a Swedish Supergrower of Orchids ~by Arne

Now and then I check the web-site from the Swedish Orchid Society – you may want to think of it as my alma mater of orchid culture.  One day - I guess it was about one-and-a half-year ago I realized that one single person living in the south of Sweden was dominating the whole society.  In fact, that is an understatement because I think he is one of the greatest orchid grower I know of in the northern hemisphere.  His name is Tommy Ljunggren and you should check out what he is doing at his web-site http://ljunggrens.org/.

The reason why I’m impressed is that he is defying all problems associated with the culture of the most warm and light loving orchids at the 60^th latitude.  That means culture of almost only Vanda in a sun-deprived and considerably cold location that is north of Newfoundland in the USA.  He has been able to achieve all this mostly because of persistence, interest and knowledge.  Nevertheless, since some 10-15 years ago there are also artificial lights nowadays that are so strong that extremely light-loving orchids can indeed be cultured even in a basement.  So from now on, we have our first super-compact fluorescent light fixture in our basement and we expect supergrowth.

To the right, a new 'strong' light has been added to our basement make-shift orchid  sanctuary. This light would be great during the winter months as some of our orchids are from the tropics,  for example our Aerides houlletiana, which is growing bigger in size.

I will conclude this post with two pictures of our very reliable Cattleya Love Knot. A new post will follow next week as we have a few up our sleeves! Until then, have a great week!