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!

New Plants: Plantae

Nice Wrapping work!

The order from Plantae was quite a bit larger, with me basically choosing almost everything on the list that was under R100 and had nifty looking flowers, plus a few other things I fancied...!

I was really impressed with the way the order was wrapped, with each plant separately wrapped in paper, with more delicate plants also getting a layer of polyester wool under the paper. Only one of the plants was sent bare root (other than those which were mounted, obviously), which I quite like - saves potting up, and I think the plants might get less stressed; the potting mix was held in place with newspaper and packing tape.

Extra polyester fibre protection.

Delicate cargo.

With that, on to the plants!

Aerangis fastuosa

Aerangis modesta
I accidentally ordered one from each of the two suppliers. Oh well :)

We ended up with quite a lot of Dendrobiums:

Dendrobium harveyanum

Dendrobium hercoglossum

Dendrobium loddigesii

Dendrobium moschatum

Dendrobium nobile

Dendrobium tannii
This plant was a generous replacement for a Masdevallia which was unavailable at the time I placed my order -
apparently, they were badly affected by scale,
and Tinus didn't want to send me infected plants -
which I'm more than happy about!

Oerstedella centradenia
A rather lovely plant name, somehow.
(I forgot to photograph this one; will rectify soon - done!)
This was the only plant that wasn't mounted or in a pot,
and looks like it was a recent cutting off a larger plant.

Schoenorchis fragrans
A very cute, minute little orchid; you almost need a magnifying glass to see it!
The leaves have a very cool sculptured texture.

Tetramicra canaliculata
Hard to forget the name of this one; reminds me of a seaweed whose specific epithet
was quite amusing in undergrad (Pelvetia canaliculata [can-I-lick-you-later...]
- hey, we're all young once).
As it was quite small, it was thrown in as a "freebie" - many thanks!

Tolumnia Jairak Rainbow
I don't remember ordering this - will find out how it ended up in this order. :)
Edit: Tinus confirmed this was indeed a bonus - yay! Thanks :D

Tolumnia pirinochila

Tolumnia pulchella

Tolumnia urophylla

With that, the OOAB growing areas are certainly starting to look a little tight. We've even had to relegate a few plants to the windowsill behind the main plant rack! Fortunately, a lot of the plants are quite small and are mounted on bits of wood, so they don't take up too much room. I really like the look of all the hanging (mounted) plants - and being naturally epiphytic, this probably suits them quite well. You just have to water them more regularly than potted plants, which suits me fine!