Orchid Borealis

(The photos are from April 12, 2020) This species makes rather weird flowers.  The flowers are located at the base of pseudobulbs, so it is pretty difficult to take pictures of them.  Also, I took photos when the flowers were starting to wilt, so I couldn't get good photos.  But I made the dissection, so I'm posting the photos here.  I'll update with a better photos next time when it flowers.  But it is rather a slow grower; I've had it for 5 years (purchased in May 2015 from Far East Agriculture), and this is the first flower.  So I'm not sure when it will flower next. According to IOSPE (I didn't double check), this species is fairly wide spread; from India, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand at elevations of 0-1300m.  I have been growing it at a cool-end of intermediate temperature; the max/min daily temperature is 29/18C (84/65F) in the summer and 21/13C (70/55F) in the winter.  I was growing it at PPFD of 70  µ mol m -2  s - ...

This plant flowered at the end of May.  The Covid-19 pandemic caused lots of changes for our lives (home-schooling a kid, canceled summer camps etc.), and I haven't gotten around posting this blog post until now.  Even thought it is expected that a new disease will pop up now and then, but I've never thought that we would experience the pandemic of such a large scale in our lifetime.  We shouldn't take this lightly since so many lives are lost, but it is a unique experience to learn how people and the society respond to pandemics. Going back to the plant, I noticed Bulbophyllum japonicum (Laos) listed in 2019 price-list of NT Orchids. B. japonicum is from Japan, Taiwan, and China, and I was skeptical that the distribution wouuld stretch to Laos.  So I had to get it to see what it it.  When the flowers opened in May 2020, it was obviously miss-identification.  Going through the orchid checklist of Laos (Schuiteman et al. 2008), I quickly learned t...