Orchid Borealis

Plants have been growing and flowering, regardless of the change in our world, but I haven't updated the blog for a while.  But this pretty orchid is in bloom, so I wanted to upload the photos. Jumellea is a moderately small genus with about 57 species (Rakotoarivelo et al. 2012).  Some species of Jumellea are similar to each other and difficult to identify (for me), but J. teretifolia is easily recognizable due to the cylindrical leaves (as the species epithet indicates).  The narrow and long flower parts give the elegant look.  This species is endemic to central highlands (1100-1500m) of Madagascar (Provinces of  Antananarivo , Fianarantsoa , Toamasina ; Cribb & Hermans 2009). Pollination biology of this species was studied by Nilsson et al. (1987).  Three interesting observations can be highlighted.  First, this species appears to rely on a single pollinator species.  Among 6 species of hawkmoths with long probosces (straw-lik...

Summer in Alaska is gorgeous, but too short.  But the summer is gone, and the leaves are already turning yellow; we'll have a busy month to get ready for the winter.  We had unusually wet summer, and we didn't have to water our outside garden at all!  Also, we had almost no smoke from the forest fire, which is unusual. I received this plant in summer 2015 from Malala Orchids when Botanica Ltd  was organizing the group order.  Unfortunately, this was my first and last order from Malala.  Malala has been rescuing orchids from rapid destruction of the forests in Madagascar, and went through the trouble of getting permits to export legally and properly.  The owner of Malala, Michelle Andriamanamihaja, passed away earlier this year.  Here is a link to a nice post about this by Gilles Grunenwald in his awesome blog. This plant was labelled as Jumellea intricata .  But when it flowered, it was not the correct identification.  I attempte...