Paphiopedilum Onyx

Our Paphiopedilum Onyx is in bloom again. Clearly we're doing something right! The plant has loads of new growth and was repotted a few months ago (most paphs enjoy annual repotting). The flower spike is surprisingly tall. Paph. spikes seem to be quite easy to "bruise", although it did have a rough time in the car on the way to the EPOS meeting last week, falling over several times before I found that it fit quite happily in the cup holder. Fortunately nothing broke! Strangely, I have another plant of this type that shows no sign of flowering, yet is cared for essentially identically.

Paphiopedilum Onyx

Paph. Onyx, detail of staminode

Paph. Onyx, Staminode and pollinium

Paph. Onyx, Leaf Detail

The guest speaker, Hendrelien Peters (who coincidentally saw this plant last year in February too), noted that the staking could be improved by holding the flower by the ovary at the back (rather than lower down as I had it); this would pull the flower more upright; the ideal paph to an orchid judge would pretty much be a perfectly vertical round circle with a pouch on it! 

This plant not only has great flowers, but is one of my favourite orchids out of bloom too, thanks to its blocky variegated leaves. Paphs make quite good windowsill houseplants (these so called "Maudiae-type" [like this Onyx] paphs particularly so), as long as they don't get direct sunlight or get too dry. If you want something a bit different to a phalaenopsis for a fairly forgiving plant, try a paph!  If you're short on space, many of them are quite compact growers (unlike Phragmipedium). I'd quite like to get a so-called "vinicolor" paph, which has burgundy red-ish blooms, and often purpleish leaves at some stage in the near future.

Plant Update - new spikes! New Flowers!

I took some pictures on Sunday afternoon of some progress at OOAB HQ.

First up, our lovely Stenoglottis S0703 (Sten. Saturn 'Electric' x Sten. woodii 'Gous') has finally flowered after watching three spikes slowly grow. The spottiness of the leaves carries on into the flowers!

I've since found out this cross is called Stenoglottis Ganymede - quite a good name seeing as Ganymede is one of Saturn's moons!

Stenoglottis Ganymede spike - one of three!

Flowering Triffid Stenoglottis

Stenoglottis Ganymede flower

Stenoglottis Ganymede flower

Not all the flowers on the spikes have opened yet. We're thinking of taking this one to the EPOS meeting on Thursday this week.

Next up, out Rhynchostylis coelestis has not one but two spikes on it. Guess the little bout of fungus or whatever hasn't worried it too much...

Looks like the flowers will be purple-ish or lilac-y. Don't think it'll be open by Thursday though!

Yay, buds!

Nearly opening...!

Second spike

Also, the bud on our Paphiopedilum Onyx has opened fully and is more symmetrical that the one on its friend.

Paphiopedilum Onyx

Finally, an update on the progress of our recently (~3 weeks) deflasked seedlings.
Some really hot, dry days took their toll, I think - this was before my propagator arrived, unfortunately, so I think some of them really took strain. They're now happily cocooned in the Garland Big 3 propagator - and I'm keeping a beady eye out for fungus. A few plants in each tray had started obviously dying, so I pulled them out.

Potinara/Rhyncholaeliocattleya(?)
(A18 Blc. Three Sun 'Sun #16' x Pot. Shin Shiang Diamond)
Note the dying seedlings :( 

Brassolaeliocattleya/Rhyncholaeliocattleya(?)
( Blc. A17 Blc. Chian-Tzy Salmon x Blc. Shinfong Luoyang 'Gold')
Fewer dying plants.

Not too bad, I think! In less positive news, this morning I finally noticed that our Microcoelia exilis is *covered* in scale, so I spent about 15 minutes scratching it all off with my fingernails - will have to do another once-over later on and keep an eye out for more of those buggers. I also saw a single mealybug on one of the plants and squashed it immediately.

EPOS Meeting, February 2011

On Thursday, we both went to the EPOS meeting in Port Elizabeth, which had moved venues as the previous one had become unavailable. Unfortunately, the directions in the newsletter weren't quite accurate, so a bit of driving around was required before we found it; not being denizens of PE, out grasp of the place outside of a few shopping malls and the like is limited!

It was time for the Annual General Meeting - being such new members, we felt a little out of our depth, but the proceedings went by quite quickly, with most of the current committee re-elected. The finances also look very healthy!

After that, we had a slide show by Hendrelien Peters who is based somewhere near Durban. Her talk was entitled "Orchids Down Under" and was filled with pictures of orchids that an acquaintance (a South African emigre) had sent her of how things are done in Australia. I didn't make a list of all the different plants therein, but people seemed most impressed with the Cymbidiums and how well they were being grown. My girlfriend often whispered which ones she liked in my ear; "We can have one of those" are always pleasing words. She's not into naming things, so it's my job to keep track of such details...!

We entered the monthly raffle (which gives you a chance of winning a plant) - Sharli's number came up first, so she had to choose between one of two Cymbidiums or a Phaius; the Phaius has flower spikes about 2.5m tall (apparently) so that wasn't a good fit for OOAB! The other club members suggested a Cymbidium, so we now add Cymbidium 2478 (Mighty Sensation x Golden Tiger 'Easter Emerald' 4n) to our little collection!

Cymbidium 2478
(Mighty Sensation x Golden Tiger 'Easter Emerald' 4n)

Part of the monthly meetings is the "Plant Table", where club-members bring any along plants they wish to for judging (and admiration by fellow orchid-maniacs!); after much discussion between taking the red Cattleya and the albino Maudiae Paph, we decided to take along our Paphiopedilum Onyx, which has recently opened a flower and has another one on its way and has very attractive mottled leaves.We were quite heavily laden on our way in, as I had volunteered to supply some treats for tea-time at the previous meeting - orchid in one hand, cakes in the other!

Paphiopedilum Onyx
This is actually two plants in two half-moon pots.

Paphiopedilum Onyx
Close-up of new flower

Paphiopedilum Onyx
You can't see it in this picture,
but there is another flower developing behind this one.
Multifloral Paphs, FTW!

We didn't win any prizes for it (not surprising!), but we got some useful tips about potting it on and so on; these plants have an annoying habit of growing so that the new growths are staggered upwards from the old ones, getting further and further from the potting mix, apparently an adaptation to growing up the bottom of tree stumps and rocky slopes and the like. The visiting judge wasn't too impressed with the wonky stem (and I imagine my cable-tied stake extension using a kebab skewer wasn't much admired either). We're thinking about creating a sloping pot to keep it in! The prize-winners were all Cattleyas, if memory serves. I find many Cattleyas a little bit too "showy" - almost as if they're trying too hard and have too much make-up on! There weren't quite as many plants on display this month as there were last month, but there were some gems. With the other stuff in tow, I didn't feel like also lugging all my camera gear down, so I'm afraid there are no photos. If you want to see pictures of last month's winners, they're available on the last page of the EPOS February Newsletter. Another useful tip we picked up was to only attempt staking and flower manipulations in the middle of the day, when the stems and stalks are apparently at their most flexible. Good to know!

We came away (unsurprisingly) wanting more plants; on display were two lovely little Pleurothallids, a deep pink Stelis argentata (syn. vulcanica) and a Restrepia falkenbergii, which are officially sanctioned for entry into the OOAB collection, as are Antelope-group Dendrobiums. Interestingly, you can grow "cuttings" of most Restrepia just like you would an African Violet - gently pull a leaf off the plant (with as long a petiole as you can manage), pop the petiole in some damp river sand with the leaf poking up, and you'll soon have more plants; they often frequently grow keikis from there naturally; this specimen had a few, which someone suggested the owner should keep an eye on, just in case they went walking...! One of the joys of Pleurothallids is they're mostly quite small; a bonus if your growing area is small. I hoped this permission/recognition of planty greatness meant immediate acquisition, but my partner pointed out that it was long-term "when we actually have space those are quite nice" rather than "get thee on the internet and make the purchase forthwith" permission!

We now await next month's meeting...

Re-shuffle, Re-plant, Re-decorate...

After getting a light meter, we've started some re-organising at OOAB, as I don't feel some of the plants are getting enough light. We also did some fairly major re-potting to our little succulent collection over the weekend, as several were straining their pots or otherwise looking sad. Here are some pictures of the results quickly snapped this morning, and a closer look at some of the plants.

"Shadecloth" (net curtain) added, we moved (L-R)
Cymbidium 2328 (Annie Kelly 'New Horizon' x Enzan Shining 'Geyserland')
Dendrobium kingianum
Laeliocattleya Tropical Treat C0341
Slc. Kararizi Dawn 'Red Star'
Also: payday and big queue for bank (in the street)!

I'm also thinking the Ascocentrum and Rhyncostylis might like to move closer to the light, and perhaps some of the other light-lovers - but we need more space there... Will have to Build Something! This side (pic above) of the balcony gets an hour or two of direct sunlight in the afternoon; we added some net curtain to help diffuse this a bit.

As a result of the move,
the "orchid shelf" is looking a little more barren
(also the Oncidium is currently on quarantine in the bathtub,
until I'm sure the black fly are dead).

In non-orchid news (bear with me, Orchidophiles!)...

On a trip around Sunnyside Garden Centre in Grahamstown (main purpose: obtain sand for making potting mix and new larger planters for succulents), we found some bags of fluorite/calcite stones at the bargain price of R30 each. These have now been artfully arranged around the succulent collection, which gets several hours of morning sun. Kind of hard to see in the picture, but I'm assured it looks Awesome. Will have to play with the lighting sometime to see if it can be rendered so on camera! As with pretty much all the photos on the blog, clicking on the picture will take you to a larger size so you can see what's going on.

Lots 'o Rocks (and plants).

Repotted succulents
Transplanted succulent seedlings (bonsai pot rear left)
New succulent seeds (under glass)

Not sure what this is, but I like the leaves a lot.
Has been flourishing since moving into this pot a few months ago.

Fockea edulis
This little plant had filled it's tiny old pot right up.
Time for more space!

Four of the baobab seedlings, coming along nicely.

First baobab to sprout, in supplied bonsai pot, new leaves opening.

Our African violet has come into bloom again, yay!
I imagine it's enjoying all the humidity it gets now.

One of our 2 Tillandsia caput-medusae bulbosa.
I'd like to find some bark or similar to mount them on.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...!

The three Disa bivalvata we unflasked a few weeks back seem to be doing OK; here's an updated picture from this morning:

Disa bivalvata community pot

And one of our Paphiopedilum is about to open a new flower:

Paphiopedilum Onyx

Paphiopedilums

We bought some Paphiopedilums at Exotic Plant Company. Much like the Zygopetalum, they didn't have too much information beyond their Genus name. I've written to them asking if they might have additional details on these three plants, fingers crossed! (Edit: they did, have added names).

The more fancy looking of the two paphs looks like this, and was originally grown by PP Orchideeën in the Netherlands:

Paphiopedilum (Bagley x insigne)

The other one is showy in a rather elegant, understated way, with mottled green leaves and flowers striped with green:

Paphiopedilum Onyx

Note the stripy leaves.

Paphiopedilum are classed as "semi-terrestrial" orchids; their potting mixes are generally a little finer and more water-retentive than those for true epiphytes. They generally grow quite low down in forests, often in leaf litter, in fairly shaded habitats, so they prefer quite low light as a general rule. Apparently they're generally quite happy as houseplants, preferring similar temperatures to us!