Orchid Borealis

The return of salmons is an exciting part of Alaskan summer for many people.  Taiga experienced a festival-like event of dip-netting in Kenai River two years ago ( link ).  But he hadn't caught a salmon by himself.  So this year, we hoped that Taiga would experience the power of salmons by himself.  Salmon runs can be quite different every year, and we wouldn't catch many if we miss the timing.  Also, I wasn't sure if some areas are fishable by a 7-year old kid.  With a bit of uncertainty, we started our adventure on Sunday, June 30, 2019 and fished almost everyday for a week.  Overall, I would say we had a successful trip!  It was the time when intense smoke from Shovel Creek Fire near Fairbanks was coming into town, so it was a great timing to escape from the smoke, too. First, we checked Gulkana River from Sourdough Creek campground and at the bridge of Richardson Highway.  But a fisherman with a raft said that it was very slow, so ...

This variety, 御城覆輪 (Gojou-fukurin),  is a medium sized  Vanda  ( Neofinetia )  falcata .  The leaves are relatively straight and does not curve down too much, so the leaves look spreading up.  Because of this leaf shape, it gives an impression of masculine beauty.  The color of marginal variegation is white, but there are some variations, probably due to the culture.  It has Doro-jiku (brown/purple stem/base of the leaves), and the tips of the roots are green (Ao-ne).  Tenkei-fukurin (天恵覆輪), derived from Gojou-fukurin, has yellow fukurin and the width of the variegation is generally wider (i.e. the green part seems to be narrower).  Gekkeikan (月桂冠) is also derived from Gojou-fukurin and the newer leaves have white fukurin, but becomes yellow as the leaves age.  There is also a rare variety, Tenjou-nishiki (天城錦), derived from Tenkei-fukurin, and it has small, needle (narrow) leaves. This is a fairly old variety, discovered mor...

I got this Rangaeris muscicola  from Afri Orchids relatively recently (spring 2018).  One of the interesting features of this species is that the individual flowers change the color as they age from white to yellow or orange in older flowers.  You can see that the top right flower is the old flower with yellow color.  Old flowers of mine doesn't have intense color, but I have seen photos of some other plants with a strong contrast, and one may be puzzled that a single plant is producing two different types of flowers. It has a nice sweet fragrance, but it has a little chemical touch, and I wouldn't call it my favorite.  Stewart et al (2006) mentioned that the color of spur was pinkish-orange, but my plant has yellowish-green spurs. The top flower is starting to change the color. Rangaeris is a small African genus with about 5 species.  This species has a large geographic distribution including Western (Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mal...

Spring in Alaska is short, and we have a small window of time for gardening.  We should have been finishing gardening before the summer starts, but the weather was so nice that we decided to go for two nights of camping over Memorial Day weekend.  On Friday night after fixing up the camper, we considered several camping spots such as Nome Creek, Chatanika River, or Denali National Park.  But Taiga had his mind set to 48 Mile Pond along Chena Hot Spring Road, which is a part of Chena River State Recreation Area .  It is one of Taiga's favorite fishing spots and I wrote about it previously ( link ).  The beautiful boreal forest of Chena River State Recreation Area can be reached within 1 hour of drive from Fairbanks, and it provides many outdoor opportunities. "We fished a lot" describes this camping trip.  We had a late start and arrived there after 5PM on Saturday, and it was crowed. There were about 3 large groups and 3-4 other families.  Fortunat...

I got this plant from Andy's Orchids without a name as  Lepanthes sp in November 2017.  It was growing and flowering well, but it declined during our summer vacation in 2018.  I set up automatic misting since we were away for almost 1 month, but somehow, this plant wasn't getting enough water.  It was left with only 2 leaves or so, but it did recover fairly quickly (the photo of the whole plant is taken before this incident, but the plants are getting closer to the original size now).  I have been growing it at the cool-end of intermediate; max/min daily temperature of 29/18C (84/65F) in the summer and 21/13C (70/55F) in the winter.  In the summer time, it is less happy, but this species seems to be able to handle fairly warm condition (for Lepanthes ). There are so many species in this genus, so it is tedious to look for the identification, but I finally decided to spend a bit of time to find the identification of this plant.  I think it is L...