Orchid Borealis

I received this plant as a small seedling from Olympic Orchids 10 years ago.  This species recycles old flowering stalk, so new flowering branches are added to the old ones.  It was growing in an area where many orchids were forming a tangled mess.  I had to re-pot it, and during the process of extraction, I probably lost 30-40% of buds (broke a couple branches). Phalaenopsis mariae is from Philippines (Luzon, Mindoro, Mindanao, and Sulu-Archipelago) and north eastern tip of Borneo Island, growing under 600m of elevation.  It seems to do well under an intermediate temperature, and moderate amount of light. Dissected flower.  The scale below is mm.  The right petal, dorsal sepal, and right lateral sepal are showing the adaxial sufrace (i.e., the side facing front of the flower opposite of the stem).  The abaxial surface (closer to the stem, back-side) is shown for the left petal and lateral sepal. The Lip before the removal of the side-lobes.  It ...

Cattleya harrisoniana Cattleya loddigesii and Cattleya harrisoniana are beautiful species; the shape of the flower is well-proportioned and appealing to me.  I'm not completely sure if my plants are correctly identified, but I decided to make a comparison between them since they flowered at the same time since these two species look very similar. The web pages of Miranda Orchids used to contain extensive information about Cattleya .  Unfortunately, these pages were gone after the redesign.  But the previous informative web site can be found in Internet Archive ( link ), and the differences of C. loddigesii and C. harrisoniana are described here .  According to the web page, the geographic distributions of these two species are mostly not overlapping; C. harrisoniana in the east, coastal region and C. loddigesii in the west, interior region of Brazil.  there are some area where two species co-occur.  The flowering season is different; C. loddigesii i...

Cattleya maxima is one of the oldest described species of Cattleya .  Lindley described C. maxima in 1831, after describing the first Cattleya , C. labiata , in 1821.  Four additional bifoliate Cattleya (each pseudobulb usually produces 2 leaves) were described between these two species.  Although it was the second described unifoliate (single-leaf) Cattleya , it was the first species discovered in this genus.  Spanish botanists sent the herbarium specimen of C. maxima in 1777, but nothing was done to the specimen for over 50 years.  Chadwick and Chadwick (2006) contains the details of the history of the discovery, disappearance, and re-discovery of this beautiful species.  You can also read the story in their web site ( link ). Some unifoliate Cattalya are difficult to identify because they look similar.  But C. maxima is relatively easy to recognize due to the unique floral feature, the yellow stripe in the middle of the lip.  This featu...

Dolly Varden Trout ( Salvelinus malma ) at Russian River We avoided traveling in summer 2020 due to the pandemic.  Taiga was really bummed because he was planning to go for Salmon fishing.  When we were deciding our vacation destination for the Independence Day weekend of 2021, Taiga was all set to go back to Klutina River for Sockeye (Red) Salmon, and Valdez for Pink Salmon, just like the trip we did in 2019 ( link ).  Salmon runs are different every year.  We checked various sources a couple days before the weekend, but salmons weren't running hot in Klutina nor Valdez.  So at the last minute, we changed the destination, and headed to Kenai peninsula.  I'm just writing down about the trip for this post before I forget. We had a late start on Sunday, July 4, but we managed to drive to Byers Lake Campground.  The last time we stayed here, it was infested with mosquitoes, but it wasn't bad this year.  We grabbed sandwich materials for dinner on the...