Orchid Borealis

I recently got the tuber of this species in May 2016 from Louisiana Orchid Connection (LOC) when we were visiting Redland International Orchid Festival .  It was labelled as W-3940, 50116, and LOC imported it from Madagascar in May 2016.  It was a large, healthy tuber.  It was left as a bare tuber for a month (I didn't have time to plant it), and it was kept dry (probably sprinkled a little bit of water ever other week) in the summer time.  Around the end of August (Aug. 20), it started to send the leaf up, and it started to open flowers in mid October.  So I don't know much about the cultivation of this species yet.  But the yellow and green flowers are so pretty, so I decided to post it.  I'll update the post as I learn more about this species, but for now, I'm posting a couple photos. Cynorkis flexuosa appears to be fairly wide-spread in Madagascar. It appears that many of the herbarium records are from 500-1000m of elevation.  So I...

Cynorkis angustipetala may sound like an esoteric species, but it is a relatively available species.  Due to some nomenclature confusions (I attempted to summarize them below), C. angustipetala may be sold as C. guttata or C. uncinata .  Well, I admit genus Cynorkis is not as popular as other orchids such as Paphiopedilum , but there are quite a few of us who get excited by them, and this is relatively popular within the genus due to the large display. Cynorkis  is a fairly large genus with more than 150 mostly terrestrial or lithophytic species.  The genus name means dog's balls; I mean testicles, not the slobbery tennis balls for fetch.  Hmmm, I guess they imagined that the tubers look like the testicles.  Madagascar is the center of the diversity in this group, with about 120 species, which are mostly endemic to Madagascar (Hermans 2009).   Cynorkis angustipetala  is also endemic to Madagascar, and its habitat is terrestrial in r...

Happy New Year to all! There were lots of positive aspects of my 2015, but I can't say that it was my best year for me in many aspects.  With orchids, I became obsessed with getting rid of the bush snails (hopefully I can write about what I learned from reviewing snail literatures some day).  I tried bunch of chemicals, and there were quite a bit of casualties ( Phalaenopsis species were most influenced by this).  I'm guessing that it was probably less harmful if I didn't declare the war against those tough guys.  Oh well.  I'm hoping that 2016 will be a better year.  Indeed, there are quite a few interesting orchids (to me) which are starting to grow or flower now. This one is imported as Cynorkis lilacina from Malala via Botanica Ltd. in July 2015. But after talking to two knowledgeable friends, it appears to be miss-identified.  They both suggested that it could be C. baronii .   By looking at photos, there is also some similarity to...