Dendrochilum glumaceum

I often find small things repay close attention; the natural world is full of miniature marvels, and orchids no less so. You can spend quite a long time looking at things through a 1:1 macro lens (a microscope even more so) - and adding a 2x teleconverter to your macro lens can get you some really interesting images. Once you get those images back and look at them full screen, the results can be quite amazing. The pictures below were taken at a 1:1 macro setting through a Canon 100mm macro lens at f16 1/60th second exposure with total flash lighting.

Dendrochilum orchids generally have long flower stems with many flowers growing off them in very close proximity, giving a "bottle brush" effect. Grown to specimen size, these plants look great with gracefully arched stems dotted all over the plant (mine has a long way to go...!). But take a closer look and you'll see more obviously "orchid-like" flowers hidden in there.

Dendrochilum glumaceum

Dendrochilum glumaceum

Dendrochilum glumaceum is quite strongly scented - I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but it's a sort of sweet, creamy smell - the sort of smell you sometimes get in "creme" hand soaps that I absolutely hate, but many will find very pleasant! Googling the scent of this species brings back a lot of hits for "hay scented" - I can't imagine hay smelling anything like this, because in my mind hay would be freshly cut grass, a smell I'm familiar with from mowing lawns. As far as I can tell, Dendrochilum seem to like being kept quite moist. If you're interested in learning more about this genus, make sure to check out dendrochilum.com!