Brassocattleya Morning Glory

Some time back, a member of the EPOS (Margaret) gave me part of a Brassocattleya (Bc.) Morning Glory that another member had given her, as it more or less fell in two when she repotted it - orchid society plant insurance is to spread divisions of your plants around in case anything untoward happens to yours!

After a long wait, four of the buds have opened: 

Bc. Morning Glory; detail of lip

Bc. Morning Glory

Bc. Morning Glory

Bc. Morning Glory; detail of lip

This is the orchid with the largest individual flowers the OOAB collection; we tend to steer away from the giant Cattleya-type blooms for the most part, but this is quite a nice plant to my eyes, and it's very hard to say no to a free orchid. :)  Incidentally, this plant is another one of the casualties in the taxonomic name wars; its parents, which constitute a first generation (primary) intergeneric hybrid are (for the moment) classified as Brassavola nodosa and Cattleya purpurata. Cattleya purpurata used to be in the genus Laelia, so many people may have seen this plant labelled Bl. (Brassolaelia) Morning Glory; however, for the moment at least, Brassocattleya (Bc.) Morning Glory is the right name! If you look at the two parents (click on the links above), you'll see that the colour and lip patterning must come from the Cattleya parent, whilst the huge lip and somewhat narrower petals and sepals seem to be inherited from the Brassavola parent. This is quite an old hybrid, first registered in 1958; this cross has since gone on form part of at least 27 other registered hybrid orchids (according to version 8 of OrchidWiz).

It arrived at OOAB HQ with some scale; careful ministrations with cotton buds soaked in surgical spirits and drizzling a little Bio Kill into the leaf axils where we couldn't reach seems to have knocked out those menacing little beasts. Talking of menacing little beasts, the fellow EPOS member who gave me this division lost about half of their first flowers (which developed a month or so earlier than mine) to a slug, which devoured several promising buds overnight!

Oerstedella centradenia

This little Oerstedella has been fighting a long, hard battle against scale. Eventually, I put this little plant in a ziplock bag, added some Bio Kill, and shook it around until the entire plant was wet with insecticide. This seems to be a pretty effective small-scale way of applying pesticides, and is particularly nice as you don't get any overspray - particularly handy for indoor growers with no garden (like us here at OOAB) to use for a quick spray. After that, I potted it up in some Hydroton (LECA). This seems to have finally knocked out the scale, and the plant has responded with some pretty little flowers.

Oerstedella centradenia

Oerstedella centradenia

 I hope it will now decide to start thriving a little more now that its energy isn't continually sapped by vicious little bugs!

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!

Aerangis fastuosa

You may remember this plant from last year. It has again decided to bloom for us in September (it's still going strong now).

Aerangis fastuosa

Aerangis fastuosa
Note the long spur

Aerangis fastuosa

Again, it won "Best Miniature" on display at the EPOS September meeting plant table (we also took along the Jumellea comorensis you may remember from the previous post and our Dendrochilum glumaceum). It was pure white when we displayed it, but there seems to be a little damage to the blooms now (the slight brown discolouration at the back of the lip), presumably from being jumbled around during the ~260km round trip. The blooms aren't as profuse this year; I'm chalking this up to less humidity (because our humidifiers have all broken). Still a very charming plant, and one day I may get around to mounting it, which will let it show off its flowers to best effect! Again, it has a fairly heady jasmine smell, but not nearly as pronounced as last year (when it had more than twice as many flowers).

Jumellea comorensis

Here is our Jumellea comorensis, which has been in bloom (just the one flower) for over a month now. I really like Angraecoid orchids - and a lot of them come from countries in the area the project I work for studies (only we study the sea - not too many orchids there...!) and it seems like quite a cool idea to grow things that come from more or less where you live. I took this one to the last EPOS meeting in September; it looks like the transport (or maybe just time) has done some damage; it's going a bit brown at the back there; it was initially pure white.

I've actually been to the island of Grand Comoro (Ngazidja) (comorensis means "from the comoros" - this species is known from Grand Comoro) - way back in 2003 - for a grand total of about 5 hours, hopping off a ship, taking a taxi to a tiny village, deciding the weather was too rough to dive from the beach (massive boulders making an eerie low pitched crunching noise) and then back to the ship. The roads there are incredibly narrow, and we noticed that many cars were missing wing mirrors. Amazingly, the taxi we took still had one. By the time we got from the capital, Moroni, to the village (Itsandra), the wing mirror was gone...

Anyway, enough words, let's look at some flowers!

Jumellea comorensis - front

Jumellea comorensis - lateral

Jumellea comorensis

The long spur seems to have stayed caught up in the node where the flower originated (see the second picture above); if you do a google image search of this species, it seems to be quite a common trait.

Some new flowers

Thing have been quiet on this blog again lately, but not so much on the balcony (and certainly not in Life!) - plenty has been in bloom, several plants for the first time!

First up, Masdevallia Snowbird (M. tovarensis x M. meijiana), which has lovely, white, long lasting blooms that - at least in my plant - are scented with a lovely mix of a clovey-cinnamon spice together with a floral scent that reminds me of jasmine. You'll notice it within a few feet of the plant, and definitely if you put your nose anywhere near it! This one hasn't flowered for me before, but when it got around to it, it certainly put on a show!

Masdevallia Snowbird

Masdevallia Snowbird

It's grown a fair bit since I received it just over a year and a half ago (wow, time flies!).

Another first time bloomer is my small Dendrochilum wenzelii, which when well established can put on quite a show. This is one of the plants Senior Management noted - at last year's (2011) EPOS Show - would be allowed into the OOAB house if one happened to find its way home. It did, mysteriously. :)

Dendrochilum wenzelii

Dendrochilum wenzelii

Next we have our Dendrobium kingianum that went absolutely crazy with flowers this year - sadly, they don't last too long. There were a lot more flowers than last year - clearly the "it's kind to be cruel" rule of withholding winter water in (many) Dendobiums works well with this species. Sadly, my plan to take more photos of it once more flowers had opened never happened, but the profusion of buds gives a good indication of the show it put on for us!

Dendrobium kingianum

Dendrobium kingianum

NOID mini Phalaenopsis

You may remember this mini Phalaenopsis from last year - it's back in bloom again this year; I think I need to step up my fertiliser dosing for the phalaenopsis (I tend to cater for the more delicate plants more in my regular watering, so fertiliser is minimal). 

And now for some non-orchids (gasp!)

This is one of Senior Management's favourite plants and its blooms stay open for a very short time indeed, so I thought I'd try and take a picture that might make a nice desktop backgroud. If you'd like to see some awesome time lapse footage of similar plants opening, have a look over at Plantgasm's Timelapse section.

Although commonly known as Amaryllis, these are in fact a cultivar of Hippeastrum.

I'm not sure what this little semi-succulent plant is, but I just love the anthers.
It has a slightly odd, pungent garlicky smell when in bloom.

As always, don't forget you can click on any of the pictures if you'd like to see a larger version!