Sobralia callosa L.O. Williams 1946, a tiny representative of a genus know for its gigantic plants

Until a few years ago, all the Sobralias I knew were either large, or gigantic plants.   When I visited Ecuador I saw Sobralia plants with fifteen feet tall canes.    About two years ago I brought a Sobralia decora and was pleasantly surprised at how well it did in my garden.   Encouraged by my success with Sob. decora I decided to try other species.  Among the species I brought was Sobralia callosa.

At first I was overly enthused with this plant as I had never seen it in bloom in any local show or group meeting, a sign that either it was not that popular, or that few people were able to keep it alive.  But I was pleasantly surprised when it grew well without any special attention.  In 2014, it bloomed three times.  The first time it bloomed I missed it entirely and only found out when I noticed the wilted flower.  The second time it bloomed it produced a single flower, then in its last bloom of the year it produced four.

The photos here are of the flowers produced in January 7, 2015.  I expect that as the plant gets larger the number of flowering stems will increase.  The plant is practically microscopic by Sobralia standards, the stems barely reaching nine inches, this makes it the ideal plant for those that want to enjoy the flowers of this genus but lack the space to keep even the medium sized species.

I have yet to repot this plant from its original pot.  My experience repotting these plants have been varied.  I repotted Sobralia decora and it kept growing well without missing a beat.  I repotted Sobralia violacea it died slowly, never producing a new growth.  So my advice would be, if you are repotting these genus, to be careful and try to avoid damage to the root ball.

Sobralia callosa grows well in my climatic area, during most of the year it experiences highs in the middle seventies and low in the middle sixties.   In the summer temperatures can climb into the middle eighties but remain there just for a few hours.  I don’t fertilize this species often, watering is done weekly during the dry season, during the wet season it can rain daily for weeks or months on end.  The plant is in a place where it gets full morning sun from 8:00 until 10:30 am the rest of the day it gets sunlight filtered thought the canopy of trees that surround the house.

Cycnoches barthiorum

Cycnoches barthiorum is native of Colombia where it grows epiphytically near sea level.¹   When I bought this plant in 2005 it was not without some trepidation as it had a reputation as a difficult orchid to keep in cultivation.  At the same time I got this plant I acquired some other Cycnoches.  I had never grown Cycnoches and wanted to see how they would adapt to my local climatic conditions.

I planted the Cycnoches in plastic pots which I modified (see photo) to allow for maximum aeration of the roots.  The media used for this orchid was medium sized bark pieces.  To ensure the best drainage, a layer of Styrofoam chips was put in the bottom of the pot.

I would fertilize this plant only when it was growing.  When the new pseudobulb reached its mature size I would stop fertilizing the plant.  To insure that the plant would get plenty of fertilizer when it was producing the new pseudobulb, I would put a few bits of cow manure on top of the media.

The plant would get full sun from about eight in the morning to 11 and during the rest of the day it would get the dappled sunlight that filtered through the canopy of the trees that surround my house.  This orchid stayed in the same place for all the years I had it.  This sunlight seemed to suit the plant well.  However because the amount of sunlight my terrace gets changes with the seasons, by September it would be getting full sun earlier in the morning, I suspect this resulted in a few black spots in the otherwise perfect foliage.  However September is also one of the wettest months of the year so perhaps the spots could have been due to the high humidity.

My plant thrived under the local climate and bloomed unfailingly every year since its very first one with me.  It would produce two inflorescences in a year and on rare occasions a third smaller one.  Its blooming season was in September and October.  After blooming, late in the year, the plant would lose its leaves and remain dormant for months, until it would start growing the next year.

This plant growth/bloom cycle mashed perfectly with the local dry/wet season cycle.  I never had to water this plant as the local precipitation would supply all the water the plant needed.  During the dry season I could ignore his plant completely as it was resting in a leafless condition.  Curiously the only pest this plant ever suffered was some curious cottony insects in the leaves.  These insects were easily vanquished using some alcohol.  Surprisingly, I lost the other Cycnoches to snails and rot, but barthiorum seemed unfazed by anything nature would throw at it.

This orchid was so reliable in its growing and blooming cycle that I didn’t bother to try to get some new plants out of it.  This was an unfortunate error.  I should have cut some pieces of the pseudobulb to make new plants.  In 2011 I noted a yellow spot on the side of one of the pseudobulbs.  I cut the piece out but this didn’t help.  The plant succumbed to rot a few weeks later.  By then I had cut a number of pieces from plant and some even had begun to sprout new growths.  But apparently all had been infected with the same thing that had killed the mother plant.  One by one all rotted away.   So there is a lesson for us orchid growers, never take a plant for granted, even the hardiest, resistant orchid can die of rot if we are not careful.

¹La Croix, I. F. 2008. The new encyclopedia of orchids: 1500 species in cultivation.

Papiliochromis ramirezi, espectacular y retante

Siempre me han gustado los Papiliochromis ramirezi, creo que combinan en un paquete pequeño muchas de las virtudes que hacen populares a los cíclidos.    En adición, no muestran algunos de los terribles defectos que hacen que mantener ciertos cíclidos sea un verdadero reto.   Mi experiencia con estos peces ha sido variada.  Los que más tiempo duraron en mi pecera vivieron casi un año.  Los que menos tiempo me duraron apenas sobrevivieron algunas semanas.  Comparen esto con el hecho de que un Hemichromis lifalili (pez joya) ya tiene cuatro años en mi posesión y esta tan gordo y feliz como siempre. Un grupo de Amatatilia siquia(convicto) está próximo a cumplir los tres.    Aparentemente los ramirezi no son particularmente longevos, se dice que su largo de vida es aproximadamente dos años¹.  Compartiré con ustedes mi mejor experiencia con estos peces con la esperanza que les sea útil en mantener en buena condición a estos hermosos y peculiares pececillos.

Tuve estos peces para 1995 cuando vivía en el pueblo de Mayagüez.  Los que conocen el lugar saben lo caluroso que puede ser, el agua de la pecera se mantenía cerca de los 85F (29C) sin necesidad de calefacción alguna.  La pecera era de treinta galones (66 litros)y media 36 pulgadas de largo (1.02 metros). El agua era suave con un pH entre 6.5.  La pecera no tenía un filtro, solo una bomba de agua pequeña que creaba una corriente suave a lo largo de la misma.

Ustedes se preguntaran, ¿Porque la pecera no tenía filtro?  Hay dos razones para la ausencia del filtro, la primera era que la pecera estaba literalmente llena de plantas, principalmente de Java moss.  La segunda era que la densidad de peces era bajísima, solo cuatro ramirezi y cinco tetras neon.   La baja densidad de peces permitía que las plantas pudieran absorber los desechos de los peces y que la calidad del agua se mantuviera buena.  Las plantas obtenían su luz de una ventana cercana.   Además de las plantas en la pecera había dos pedazos de madera que tenían espacios bajo ellos en que los peces se podían refugiar si se sentían amenazados.  La pecera llevaba meses establecida cuando los ramirezi fueron introducidos a ella. 

Cuando fueron liberados los ramirezi desaparecieron en la vegetación y por un par de días no volví a verlos.  Luego de este periodo de timidez inicial los peces se acostumbraron a mi presencia y, por lo menos los grandes, no se escondían cuando me acercaba a la pecera.  Los alimentaba con comida viva, mosquitos, Chironomus (bloodworms) y comida seca.   Para que los ramirezi pudieran comer primero había que saciar a los neones, los que demostraban una feroz voracidad cuando se trataba de comida viva.   Siendo peces pequeños la cantidad de comida que consumían era relativamente modesta.   Durante el día los podía observar explorando la gravilla y los recovecos de la pecera en busca de comida.   

La pecera tenía en el mismo medio una pequeña área sin vegetación que proveía un espacio donde los peces podían nadar sin obstáculos.   Los dos ramirezi más grandes tomaron como territorios los lados opuestos de la pecera y se encontraban en este punto para intimidarse mutuamente.  Era en estos momentos en que hacían sus demostraciones territoriales que los ramirezi mostraban sus colores más brillantes.   Luego de unos momentos de confrontación, ambos peces se separaban sin que hubiera ocurrido violencia.  A los dos ramirezi pequeños a los veía con menos frecuencia que a los grandes.

Aun cuando los peces se encontraban en excelente condición y la pecera poseía las características que los libros recomiendan para la especie, nunca los observe intentar reproducirse.    Es posible que todos hayan sido machos ya que nunca vi que alguno desarrollara la barriga rosa que es característica de las hembras de esta especie.  Otra posibilidad es que el pH del agua no haya sido el apropiado.  Aunque el agua tenía un pH de 6.5  inicialmente, les confieso que a lo largo del tiempo deje de prestar atención a este parámetro, por lo que es posible que haya cambiado durante su estadía en la pecera para hacerse más neutral.     Las fotos que acompañan este escrito son de una pecera de Kennth Orth, quien amablemente me permitió fotografiar sus peces.

¹Schliewesen, Ulrich.  1992.  Aquarium fish.  Barron’s Educational Series

Cattleya dowiana var. aurea, the second plant that has bloomed for me.

The flowers, when freshly opened

This Cattleya has a reputation for being difficult to grow and bloom.  In my personal experience I can attest this plant is indeed a bit finicky.  All the plants I have grown have reacted in different ways to my care.  My first plant grew well and bloomed, only to die from rot during the rainy season.  It rotted with such startling speed, there was nothing I could do to save it.  The second plant I adquired, has been growing slowly and indifferently for a number of years and has yet to produce a blooming size pseudobulb.  The third plant has been growing well and was the one that bloomed on its first fully adult size pseudobulb.  The plant has been grown under saran cloth, watered very thoroughly once a week and fertilized every week but only when it was producing new growths.  It is growing in a mix of medium bark and limestone.  The temperatures where this plant is being grown are 85F/30C during the day most of the year, and 75F/24C at night.  In winter temperatures dip slightly being 75F/24C day and 65F/18C at night in the coldest part of the year.

The flowers lasted in perfection for five days.  In the fifth day the oldest flower collapsed, the other two flowers became limp during the next two days.  This confirms this plant reputation for relatively short lived flowers for a Cattleya.  The fragrance of the flowers was quite powerful and to my senses resembled certain types of fragrant soaps.

My experience growing this plant makes me think that you might want to try plants from a variety of sources before giving up on this species, as different plants seem to differ in their tolerance of the various environmental and climatic conditions.  

In Puerto Rico flowering size plants of this species are not common in orchid collections, although it is not rare to see seedlings from time to time. I have noted that it is rarely exhibited, althought this might have more to do with the flowers being short lived rather than with how common the plant is under cultivation

The flowers, just before they started collapsing, note that they look yellower

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Lycaste gigantea also known as Ida grandis and Sudamerlycaste grandis

This orchid is a fairly large plant with meter long inflorescenses.  The flowers are variable in color, these were apple green.  It is found in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.  It is a cool grower that lives high in the Andes.  I saw this plant in the Jardin Botanico de Quito, in Quito, the capital of Ecuador.  The inflorescenses were growing among the leaves with the result that the flowers were hidden from sight.  I detected the flowers because I could see the inflorescences arising from the pseudobulbs.  The plants were exhibited as terrestrials so flowers were near the ground.  This orchid formed a large clump but had just a few inflorescences.  This orchid has been known by a number of scientific names, Lycaste gigantea var. labelloviridis, Ida grandis, Ida labelloviridis and Sudamerlycaste grandis.  

Pleurothallis scoparum from Colombia and Ecuador, also known as Colombiana scoparum

I saw this interesting orchid in the garden of Cabañas Armonia, in Mindo, Ecuador.  The host, Alicia Toapanta, told me that the plant had been relocated to this area from some tree which were cut to make a road.  I was quite taken by this unusual Pleurothallid.  In this orchid the inflorescences grow from the tip of the leaf, not as it is most common in this genus from the base of the leaf.  So unusual is this type of flowering that this orchid and similar others were placed in a new genus Colombiana in 2004.   This flower lives in an area where day temperatures are quite pleasant, in the 70 F range, but night temperatures go down into the 40F.  This daily temperature cycle happens all year round with little if any seasonal change.