Orchid Borealis

I got a surprise when I came back from a long family vacation in Miami and Florida Keys.  Blooming  Masdevallia racemosa !   It was the biggest vacation for our family since our son, Taiga, was born 4 years ago.  Even though daily high was 86F in Miami, it was a bit too hot for us accustomed to Alaska.  We still enjoyed sun, ocean, beach, zoo, and other things which were first for Taiga.  We did lots of shell collection, and we also chased lots of exotic insects, lizards, fish, invertebrates with small nets.  Little Taiga is quite a biologist just like his parents!  The vacation included my first visit to the Redland International Orchid Festival .  It was great, but I feel a bit guilty of buying so many orchids.  I'm mostly done with potting/mounting, but it was a lot of work!  It would be great if I can write more about the vacation in the future post, but it could take a bit of time to organize all of the photos. Masdeva...

I got this from Ecuagenera about 2 years ago. But it was mislabelled as Masdevallia melanoglossa . Well, these two species aren't similar to each other (other than similarity in the name), so I think they just screwed up at the packing stage. Mislabelling could be frustrating, but I don't really get upset too much. In this case, it got something interesting which I wouldn't have gotten intentionally, so I'm not complaining. Masdevallia melanoxantha seems to be somewhat similar to M. scobina . I try to use the key in Icones Pleurothallidianarum 19 by Carl Luer. But the differentiating feature of M. melanoxantha and M. scobina is a bit confusing to me. This is the key: M. scobina : Pedicels far exceeding the floral bracts; dorsal sepal thick, verrucose M. melanoxantha : Pedicels barely exceeding the floral brats; dorsal sepal slender, not verrucose. I'm showing the pedicel of my plant above.  The pedicel of mine seems to be longer than the flo...

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 fr...

According to Masdevallias: Gems of the Orchid World by Gerritsen & Parsons (2005), Masdevallia lychniphora is found in a relatively small area in Peru; in the cloud forest between Chachapoyas and Pomacochas at an elevation of 2000m.  The species name (epithet) means ruby-bearing, which indicated the color of the bottom (lateral) sepals.  Mine seems to have deeper color, and it is more of purple than ruby red.  I wonder if the temperature influences the color in this species.  Does anyone know? The leaves show fair amount of damage.  I got this from Ecuagera about 1.5 years ago.  It was pretty stressed when I received it with the petioles (base stem) of the leaves turning black, and lots of leaves fell down. This was the initial condition: Fortunately, it was a big size plant, and it managed to survive the initial acclimation (it lost many more leaves during the process).  I was originally keeping it around 12.8-15.6C (55-60F) nigh...