Orchid Borealis

Phragmipedium schlimii belongs to section Micropetalum.  While the majority of Phragmipedium have greenish/brownish flowers, species in this section have more colorful flowers.  Before the discovery of P. besseae and P. kovachii , P. schlimii was the only species with pinkish flowers, so this Colombian species was one of the most popular species in the genus and it has been extensively used for hybridization.  The flower of this species may not be as big as P. kovachii or as bright as P. besseae , I think that this species has very cute and attractive flowers. Especially, I like its yellow staminodal shield with red spots.  The whole flower is covered by fuzzy hairs. Below, you can see the windows (fenestration) of the lip. In the top photo, you can see dark spots toward the base of the lip.  But under a different light (the bottom photo), you can't see them.  I've heard that these windows brings light into the pouch, and function as guide lights for the pollinator

Pecteilis radiata grows in Japan, Korea, and China.  The common name for this species is Sagi-sou (egret plant) in Japan. I have always admired this amazing species, and I finally decided to give it a try.  I got bulbs from Seed-Engei in spring 2015, so this is my first year growing this species.  The one I have is a variegated variety, Ginga (銀河, which means "galaxy"), which has marginal white stripes (Fukurin).  There are quite a few cultivar varieties, and this web site lists quite a few of them (in Japanese). It is supposed to require lots of  sun light, so I grew them outside in Fairbanks, AK.  Around September, when the daily low started to hit around 1.7C (35F), I decided to bring them inside under an artificial light.  Then suddenly, they started to shoot up the flowers!  I think Fairbanks summer (USDA Zone 2a) is a little too cold for their liking, so the flowering is significantly delayed.  In Japan, they are supposed to bloom in July to August.  Next year, I&

This species used to be under genus  Sophronitis , but now it is transferred to genus Cattleya to make the scientific names to be informative about their evolutionary (phylogenetic) relationships ( van den Berg 2008 ). I've been having difficult time growing the other species in the Sophronitis group, but Cattleya cernua is probably the easiest one, and it grows well in intermediate temperature.  When I was growing C. cernua in the cooler end of intermediate (lowest temp of 13C = 55F), the plant grew ok, but it became quite purplish and didn't flower so well.  Now it seems to be happier with max/min temperature of 27/16C (80/60F). I purchased my plant from Florália a couple years ago, and it is supposed to be from Bahia .  I've heard that those Bahia plants are natural tetraploid, but I haven't confirmed this.  It is supposed to have bigger leaves and flowers than the other populations. Here is a related link about the culture of this group . The ruler be

I received this plant as Octomeria lobulosa .   For my untrained eyes, it looks pretty similar to O. grandiflora .  I appreciate opinions and information with regard to these two species!  If you know a good literature of this group, please let me know. Update : My friend, Alfonso Doucette, provided me a link to a Ph. D thesis, where the author proposed that O. lobulosa to be synonymous to O. grandiflora (see the bottom of this post for the link). I looked around information for O. lobulosa , but there is almost no information about O. lobulosa .  The only thing I found is from  Orchidaceae Brasilienses Book 1 by Pabst & Dungs (1975) . So here is an excerpt from the book: The book has only illustrations of the flowers (see the figure), and there is no descriptions.  So I'm not so clear about the differences. From looking at the book, the width of the petals and sepals seems to be different.  The sepals and petals of the O. grandiflora are more pointy and their w

This one flowered out-of-season.  This species is supposed to flower in the spring to early summer.   But since it is a recent import from Brazil, its clock hasn't been reseted yet.  I received it in May 2015 from Bela Vista Orchids of Brazil.  Transition from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere could be interesting for plants.  Generally, most orchids seem to reset the clock within a year or so. Cattleya warneri is closely related to Cattleya labiata .  One of the main differences is the flowering time: C. warneri flowers in the spring and C. labiata flowers in the fall.  Also the geographic distributions are separated.   C. warneri is found in South Bahia, Esprito Santo (the center of the distribution) and Minas Gerais.  Earlier, this species was also found in Rio de Janeiro.  On the other hand, C. labiata shows a more northern distribution (Ceará, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas).  Here is a wikipedia page about the States of Brazil , which includes a Brazil

Paphiopedilum vejvarutianum was described by  Gruß and Röllke  in 2003.  There are several photos at Dr. Tanaka's web site .   Dr. Tanaka's site mentions that the species occurs  at the elevation of 500-750m,  near the  Vajiralongkorn Dam (formerly the Khao Laem Dam) in  Th ong Pha Phum District , which is a part of  Kanchanaburi Province  in Central Thailand.  Dr. Tanaka commented that although it was described fairly recently, the species was traded as  P. charlesworthii var. kanchanaburi since late 1970's. In Paphiopedilum 2nd. edition , Braem, Chiron, and Öhlund (2014)   considered that the original description is inconclusive and they questioned the validity of this taxon.  They included this as a synonym of P. barbigerum .  To me, the plant seems to be bigger than  P. barbigerum , but I don't know the extent of intraspecific variation in plant size within  P. barbigerum .  But the taxonomy of this species complex seems to be pretty complicated. I pur

The flowers of species in this genus are marvelously "odd".  The main function of flowers is to attract pollinators, and examination of floral parts generally reveals functional beauty.  But with this genus, I have no idea why the flower is shaped like this. The flowers of Scaphosepalum are up-side-down compared to majority of orchids.  This is called non-resupinate, but actually,  Scaphosepalum  has the up-side-up correctly.  The majority of orchids have the up-side-down flowers (called resupinate flowers ), so the  Scaphosepalum  flowers are technically up-side-up.  Kind of confusing, isn't it? A bit of basic floral morphology of orchids.  All orchids have 3 sepals and 3 petals (although sometimes these were fused).  In a typical orchid flower, the top most sepal is called a dorsal sepal, and the other two spreading downward are lateral sepals.  So imagine a Phalaenopsis flower and overlay a clock on it.  At 12 o'clock, there is a dorsal sepal.  At 4 and 8

Bulbophyllum patella is one of the cutest Bulbophyllum in my opinion.  I haven't found a lot of information about this species, but here is some info from A Compendium of Miniature Orchid Species Volume 1 by Ron Parsons and Mary E. Gerritsen.  By the way, this book is a bit pricey, but it is a must-have book with beautiful photos as well as nice information about the distribution, habitat, and cultural information of each species.  The species is from moss-laden, montane forest in W. and S. Highlands of New Guinea at 1600-2500m elevation.  This species belongs in section Peltopus.  According to this page of IOSPE , this section contains about 33 species mostly from New Guinea, New Caledonia, and the Western Pacific islands.  Many of them in this section are pretty species! I received my B. patella from Far East Agriculture Orchid  of Malaysia in May 2015, so I haven't had it long enough to know its culture.  But it seems to grow at a decent pace with daily max/min tempe

This is a super easy version of DIY LED with high performance.  Almost no tool is required for the assembly (wire insulation stripper does help).  Since there is no need to solder nor drill, this is so much easier than the other kinds of DIY LED such as the main stream chip-on-board (COB) based project ( here is my post  about DIY COB).  It is a bit more involved than the T8 LED conversion of the shop light , though.  Efficacy is pretty high (> 140 lumen/W).  As mentioned later, with this kind of performance (efficiency) and cost, there is no reason to use fluorescent light for growing plants any more. Advantage: Super easy assembly. High efficacy. Because of the linear shape factor, it can be easy to replace 2' or 4' fluorescent light. Light is emitted from a wide area (i.e., not a point source like COB LED).  This means more even coverage with less shadowing effect on lower leaves. It is narrow, so it can be used for high density application (similar to the adv

Masdevallia rimarima-alba  is a Peruvian species from  Huasahuasi valley  at elevation of 2500m.  According to  Masdevallias: Gems of the Orchid World by Gerritsen & Parsons (2005), the origin of the species name is quite fascinating. "rima rima" means talk-talk in the local language. The native civilization used the leaves and roots as a way to accelerate talking in the toddlers.  We are trying a bilingual environment for our 3-year old son, but I haven't thought of trying this "medicine". It is one of the species which I wanted to grow after I saw a photo in Gerritsen & Parsons's book.  I finally got an environment where I could grow it, and I received this plant from Ecuagenera about 1 year ago. It was a replacement for a dead-on-arrival plant (all leaves fell down when I opened the package, probably from the heat stress during the transit). Fortunately, the replacement arrived in a good condition, and it was already a big plant from the