This is a wonderful species! It is a compact plant (leaf length of about 12cm and the inflorescence height of about 20-25cm at this moment), the undulated leaves are delicate looking and elegant with bright green color, and the flowers are fairly large. Well, the flowers are probably not large compared to other tropical Calanthe, but my image of typical Calanthe is Japanese Calanthe (e.g. Calanthe discolor etc.), which was my first orchid I loved. My grand father was growing a couple of them in our landscaped, Japanese style garden, and I always asked him to buy me some Calanthe whenever I saw them for sale. They didn't do so well since I wasn't so responsible when I was 10 year old or so. After 30-some years, I finally have flowering Calanthe, but it is from Madagascar!
This species grows in humid, ever-green forests. It is endemic to Madagascar, but it is wide-spread, occurring from NE Madagascar, Montagne d'Ambre (Ambre mountain), to SE Madagascar, Midongy du sud National Park, according to IUCN report. Elevation range is1000-1500m (Karasawa & Ishida 1998). The species occurs in moist clay in shady humid, evergreen forest on plateau and river margins (Cribb and Hermans 2009).
The leaves are fairly thin, suggesting the low light and moist environment of forest floor. When I received it from Malala in 2015 summer, the leave were fairly dried, and some of them were pretty crispy. I was pretty sure it was dead-on-arrival. But it slowly, but steadily recovered. It still looks pretty beaten-up, and I hope that it will become stronger next year.
I have been keeping it at a cool-side of intermediate; max/min 84/65F in summer and 65/55F in winter. I may try a bit warmer this year. The media is kept relatively moist (no complete dry out), and high air humidity (70-90%RH). I have had this only 1.5 years, and I'm still figuring out how to grow it. It was receiving fairly low light, about Phalaenopsis level.
As a miscellaneous information, Karasawa & Ishida (1998) lists the chromosome count of 2n=40 (Ishida's unpublished data).
References:
Cribb, P. and J. Hermans, 2009. Field Guide to the Orchids of Madagascar, Kew Publishing, UK.
Karasawa, Kohji and Ishida, Genjiro 1998. Calanthe [in Japanese]. p.206-208. Yasaka Shobo, Japan.
Beautifull small Calanthe. Do you still keep it alive? Seldom seen in cultivation.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment. I agree that this compact Calanthe is great! It just started to bloom last week, and it is much better this year. Louisiana Orchid Connection and Botanica Ltd. are doing import at this moment, and this species is available from them.
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