Some of my flowering phal’s

Most of my Phalaenopsis orchids in bloom at the moment, showing their many colors and textures and some with scents. They will flower for a few months and it’s nice to welcome their new flowering season.  I took these pictures with my phone instead of trusted camera and not exactly sure of the results, although the pictures are ok I prefer to show more details of any flower.

Most of my orchids in a kind of in between flowering stage at the moment, so a lot of repotting, sorting out and general maintenance happening in the greenhouse. And waiting for new and exiting blooms to emerge for another season. 

Notes - new cascading cymbidiums orchids

New exiting range of cascading cymbidiums been released by Paradisia nursery in Victoria - beautiful long arching spikes, strong vivid colors, healthy, robust plants - everything any orchid grower and collector wants to see.

To show off their beautiful blooms they need to grow in the hanging baskets so that they can cascade freely, displaying multitude of flower spikes. Below is the pictures of these new generation cymbidium orchids.

Cymbidium Paradisian "Passion"

 

Cymbidium Pradisian "Black Lip"

 

 

 

Cymbidium Paradisian Tiger "Golden Falls"

Cymbidium Paradisian Ruby "Pinky"

Cymbidium Paradisian Bell "Smiley Face"

Cymbidium Paradisian Choice Dreamer

Wilsonara “Stirling Tiger”

One of my wilsonara’s flowering at the moment. it’s a cross between Odontioda 'Florence Stirling' and Ondontocidium 'Tiger Hamburhen” and it flowers with these large beautifully colored blooms.

It have long arching spikes that produce many flowers and very light herbal scent that reminds me of thyme and a bit of an attitude that demands attention. With me, “Stirling Tiger” seems to be flowering every other season and it gets moved around green house a few times in search of correct light requirement - too much light and it goes all yellow and with less light it’s just not flowering. It prefers warmer situation with a lot of air movement, and definitely wet and dry periods of growing.

Despite all this fussing, I still enjoy seeing it in flower and forgive it all of it’s shortcomings as long as I can see, smell and touch this special and magical orchid.

Dendrobium x suffusum

Dendrobium suffusum

This little Australian native orchid currently flowering - it’s dendrobium x suffusum, natural hybrid between dendrobium kingianum and dendrobium gracilicaule. It’s a medium size plant with many small flowers and very sweet scent.

Being native orchid, it happily flowers year after year without any special requirements - it likes plenty of light, plenty of moisture during spring and autumn and a bit dryer in summer.
The color of the flowers ranges from white through various shades of pink and I have seen dark, deep mauve color of this orchid as well.

 Because if it’s adaptability, this specie can be grown in a wide range of situations always rewarding with many beautiful blooms.

First cattleyas in flower

Now, that’s it’s getting a bit cooler in our part of the world, couple of my first cattleya orchids started flowering. These two orchids been with me for many many moons and I don’t even remember how they  came to me, yet every year without a fail they are the first one’s to bloom.

They one’s of the  “old fashioned” one’s, most of the cattleya’s one see these days have fuller flowers, more blooms and generally more compact plants - these one’s more lanky with occasional blooms, yet they have beauty all of their own and I love their strong colors. They also have quite strong scents - the red one smells like “tutti - frutti” and the darker purple one have very strong herbal scent with a bit of acetone in the background, not unpleasant, just different.

Some of my other orchids started waking up after the hot summer spell and many of them started developing flower spikes, so I’ll be featuring them soon in this blog.

Gongora gratulabunda orchid

I’ve been taking a break from blogging but now hopefully back with more posts about some beautiful orchids. In the past couple of months our weather here been really challenging - first with unusually very hot and humid summer that just went on and on and on and then non-stop rains and thunderstorms and winds creating a bit of a havoc in the garden and orchid house. Cleaning, re potting, sorting out and general maintenance of my plants been priority and now that the cooler weather finally arrived I can feature some of my orchids again in this blog. We must of gone through some specific sun-spot cycle or solar-storm activity, because the energy during that time felt unbelievably strong and raw.

One of my orchids that just finished it’s flowering is gongora gratulabunda - fascinating orchid native to Colombia. It flowers with masses small unusual flowers and have the most heavenly strong scent reminiscent of herbs and spices - one can smell cinnamon and thyme and myrrh and anise and all spice and fennel and saffron and there are some sweetness in the scent’s background making it very strong and pleasant.

This orchid need to grow in the hanging basket, so it can send long spikes about 1 meter long down on the side of the planter . It’s a special, strongly perfumed orchid and I am delighted seeing this beauty in flower.

gongora gratulabunda1

gongora gratulabunda