New Plants: Plantae

At the EPOS meeting on Thursday, we picked up four more plants from Plantae - a number which I felt was very reserved, but at which OOAB's Senior Management rolled her eyes and said something about "Two orchids. We said two*". Always hard to restrain yourself when presented with 1) a big, long list of great plants 2) a personal courier service by one of the owners of the nursery and 3) a 10% discount! As usual, the plants were well packed in paper/polyester wool sheeting; I don't have any pictures of that as it was quite late when we got home from Port Elizabeth; I wanted to get them out of the packaging and onto the shelving ASAP.

So, without further ado, onto the exciting part. New plants :)

First up, to go with the theme of "blue orchids", I spent a fair few minutes trying to Google pictures of various Cattleya Alliance plants which the team at Plantae had helpfully highlighted as being "blue" in their price list. You might be interested to read my post about blue orchids (and mustard). Here is our shiny new mounted Laelia sincorana f. coerulea:

Laelia sincorana f. coerulea

According to IOSPE, L. sincorana comes from a dry region of Brazil and needs a "very dry" rest period in the winter. Other sources suggest the roots need to dry "very quickly" after watering, so I imagine it'll like being near my Tolumnia. Best I remember that watering regimen in the coming months, particularly with all that moss around the roots!

Next, we have Maxillaria tenuifolia:

Maxillaria tenuifolia

As many orchid-growers will know, the flowers of this species usually have a rather interesting aroma of coconut - some people have compared it to suntan lotion, piña colada or coconut cream pie! I am trying to collect various fragrant orchids, as I find this aspect of them to be quite intriguing. To this end, I recently acquired a copy of Steven Frowine's Fragrant Orchids, which at some stage I'll get around to reading properly and reviewing. Again, this orchid apparently enjoys a somewhat dry winter "rest period". I find the delicate foliage on this one quite graceful and attractive. Apparently, many people find it prefers being mounted instead of in a pot; ours is currently in a pot with what looks like coconut husk chips. I might consider mounting it one day... It seems to prefer fairly high light levels (stick it with your Catts or Cymbidium), but will tolerate lower light levels. According to IOSPE, it seems to grow all over the place at a variety of altitudes, so I suspect it's probably quite adaptable and forgiving.

Mediocalcar decoratum is a pretty tiny, miniature mat-forming plant:

Mediocalcar decoratum

I suspect if I get growing this one right, along with my pleurothallids, it might be time to "risk" something like Dendrobium cuthbertsonii, which comes from a similar part of the world to this species and seems to prefer similar cultural requirements. This plant is apparently equally happy either mounted or in a pot, but needs room to ramble. I should perhaps consider chopping a chunk out of some EcoWeb I recently received from First Rays. It seems to prefer fairly low light, so I imagine it will be happy with the paphs, and apparently likes being regularly watered. It's a cute little plant and I look forward to seeing it flower, when these plants are covered in tiny yellow-orange blossoms. Apparently, this species was only described in 1989! Ron Hanko has some great photos of it over at Orchids in Bloom; have a look at his impressive orchidariums when you visit!

Finally, Dendrobium unicum:

Dendrobium unicum

This plant apparently drops its leaves in its second year of growth (presumably on each growth), so I must not panic if I see the leaves do so! In fact, shortly after this leaf fall, you'll see the development of flowers along nodes on the stem. It has great orange flowers which apparently "smell exactly like freshly sharpened crayons". I wonder what animal finds that smell enticing (and what would happen if you sat in its natural habitat sharpening crayons)!? Apparently, it prefers being mounted or in a basket. Like many Dendrobium, it likes a cooler, dryer period in the winter with fertiliser being withheld during that period. 

So, whilst this order might have been for four more plants, I think we can all agree they're rather small - which, it could be argued (I maintain so!), is like getting 2 plants... :D They're certainly not another Ansellia africana, which dwarfs all my other orchids. We've also made some more room at OOAB HQ by moving (thanks Ron!) two gigantic pots with frangipani planted in them to the garden outside my office. Our sneaky plan is to make/buy some kind of staging upon which to grow plants in the area formerly dominated by the frangipani. One day, we shall have a garden, and that garden shall be great. And feature two frangipani!

Hooray for miniatures!

*good thing that Bulbophyllum tingabarinum was out of stock then, phew.

Early Birthday Present :D

Yesterday I received an early birthday present from my lovely girlfriend - 4 lovely miniature orchids from Inhle Orchids, which were already unpacked by the time I was told to come home and look at my present. Apparently, the plants were wrapped in bubble wrap and placed inside a box; they seem to have come through fairly well. Interestingly, Inhle shipped them before even being paid - very unusual in South Africa! All are new genera to the OOAB collection. Yay diversity! So, without further ado:

Bulbophyllum laxiflorum
IOSPE

Bulbophyllum purpurascens
IOSPE

Pleurothallis palliolata
IOSPE

Restrepia trichoglossa
IOSPE

Can hardly wait for them all to get around to flowering!

The first two (as you can clearly see!) came mounted on little bark chunks, whilst the two Pleurothallid Alliance plants had sphagnum moss around their roots; I kept that intact and packed some more moss around the roots.

Sadly, it looks like my big bucket 'o moss (a 5l water jug with the top hacked off) has attracted what I think are fungus gnats (arghh!). The little swines are all over the place. Will have to do something about them, as I have an aversion to small insects flying around my collection! Bacillus thuringiensis ssp. israelensis is apparently a good biological control. Of course, getting hold of such things around here is an epic pain. I have yet to find a supplier of any biological controls in .za (at least, any that respond to my email).

New Plants: Outeniqua Orchids.

I was sorely tempted by and (perhaps predictably) succumbed to the temptation of the Outeniqua Orchids price list which I received through email after requesting a copy a little while back. So far, I've resisted those of Inhle and Serendipity Orchids. I sort of passed on the Inhle list with Xs next to things to my girlfriend, because she kept asking about birthday presents for me... Serendipity has gone and put it's address as about 2 highway exits away from my girlfriend's parent's house. So I suspect we'll end up there sooner rather than later.

Outeniqua (formerly Stellenkloof) Orchids are the African agents for Carter and Holmes orchids, so if you're after something from there and live down this way, Else Hall will do her best to get it for you in the next shipment. They will also happily snail-mail you Carter and Holmes catalogues just to really get you excited. I got two the other day... (Fortunately?), It's mostly Cattleyas, which I find a bit over-hyped. They're flowers that are trying far too hard, I somehow feel. OOAB HQ is rather full at the moment, so these guys will keep me company in the office for now - it's nice and cool (which the Masdevallia will like, maybe not the Paphiopedilum though), but with the aircon, I imagine the humidity is low (which they won't), but I wonder if there will be enough variation in temperature to prompt things like flowering...

The order arrived overnight after being shipped overnight from George. I opened the box to be greeted by some nicely wrapped plants:

Complete with handy packing list, just in case you forgot...

It looks like the C&H packing ethos has rubbed off! The tissue paper was slightly damp, which is probably a good thing in transit.

Top layer removed...
Each orchid individually wrapped in tissue paper.

First out the box:
Neofinetia falcata
Handy shredded plastic stuff for protection
Unfortunately, much of the compost fell out in transit. :(

N. falcata unpacked. Note jumbled mix.
I dumped it all out and redid the potting last night.
Roots look a bit dodgy, but there is a new root about to grow,
so it should be OK!

 Neofinetia falcata has a long history of being grown in Japan, where apparently it was a favourite of the ruling classes. Seems to like being cultured like a cool growing Vanda. I suspect they'd just about live in the garden outside all year round here. Apparently, they generally need more than one "fan" before they bloom, so I guess we'll be waiting for this one. Patient like a Samurai!

Next up: Masdevallia Snowbird
(M. majiana x M. tovarensis)

Looks like it just finished flowering :(

I've kind of decided that Pleurothallids are generally awesome. I want more :)

Paphiopedilum Pinocchio.

Released from its bonds!
Small plant; I guess it'll be a while before it blooms.
Paph. Pinocchio is Paph. primulinum x Paph. glaucophyllum.

This hybrid is apparently often recommended to newbie Paph growers (and noobs with orchids generally) as it's supposed to be fairly tough, and being a sequential bloomer, pretty rewarding to boot.

Masdevallia tovarensis 'Puffin'

There's some new shoots in there, yay!

And finally:

Masdevallia 'Tangerine Dragon'

M. Tangerine Dragon is M. veitchiana x M. mendozae)

I also bought some "Superthrive®" which has marketing like Verimark or Glomail on crack. I mean, seriously. This stuff must be snake oil! I'll give it a go at some stage though, particularly if anything looks really sad with life.  

Here's the little collection: 

New Plants. Joy! :D

 All pictures from my newly upgraded phone. The camera on the Nokia E72 is *much* better than the one on the E71! I still need to figure out how to force autofocus; on the E71, you press T; apparently on this one - so Google tells me - you hold down the main navi key until you're happy and then let go. Apologies for all the head-twisting orientations; I uploaded these all before realising that the E72 doesn't stick a "not the right way up/This Way Up" tag into the EXIM data, so Picasaweb doesn't autorotate them. And it's being stubborn and greying out the rotation option in my collection online :(

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!

New Plants: Van Rooyen Orchids

Today I received two orders; first I'll talk about the smaller order from Van Rooyen Orchids, based in White River. The plants were mainly shipped bare rooted, so there was a bit of potting to be done! The plants were inveigled in shredded paper, which probably protects them quite nicely in transit, although there is a fair bit of untangling to be done to get the plants out. Helpfully, a packing list was included, just in case you forgot what you ordered (and makes sure you don't leave any plants buried deep in the paper). 

Aerangis modesta
This plant had about 10 minute little snails on it which I managed to find and get rid of...

Coelogyne cristata

Epidenrum porpax (Syn. Neolehmannia porpax)
This small orchid apparently takes on a growth habit a bit like ground cover,
so does best in wide, shallow pots.

Masdevallia Marguerite 'Pink Champagne'
Finally, a Masdevallia! Looks like the flowering is over for the year... :/
I potted this up in some Sphagnum Moss I managed to find at a nursery in PE.

Microcoelia exilis
This species is very unusual in that it doesn't have any leaves,
and exists solely as roots, with occasional small flowers.

Vanda Manuvadee 'Blue'
This Vanda came in a basket, but with no hanging wires,
so we had to make some (which was a bit tricky).
Some of those roots are huge!

This particular order was shipped via Speed Services Couriers - whose website has resolutely refused to answer my enquiries as to the location of the parcel during its entire time in transit (#fail #lose #brandminus!). Being an overnight service, I assumed (correctly) that it would certainly be in town two days after being sent.