Tolumnia variegata (Sw.) Braem 1986, with flowers that appear to lack anthocyanin, these flowers are unlike any I have ever seen in the wild.

Photograph with flash

Photograph with natural light

Tolumnia variegata is one of the most common orchids in Puerto Rico.  It is often found in association with coffee plants, so its common name is "little angel of the coffee plantation".  Over the years I have seen, hundreds, maybe thousands of flowers of this species, in inflorescences of plants growing in the forest in Rio Abajo and in other types of habitats, from dry coastal scrub to moist karst forest.   The flowers usually have the same colors although they vary in size and number of flowers in the inflorescence.   A friend showed me this plant.  The flowers seem to lack anthocyanin, the pigment that produces purple and red color in the flowers.  My friend, who has seen even more Tolumnia flowers than me agrees that this plant is unique.  Sadly because it has been raining copiously in the last two weeks, only one of the flowers was in good condition.  The others were spotted or had sooty mold over them.  I am not sure what is the way to describe this variant of the species.  But it reminds me of an alba type flower.  There will be an effort to self the flowers so that seed might be collected.  Hopefully it will be successful so that the genetics of this variant might be preserved.

Typical Tolumnia variegata from the locality this plant was seen

Tolumnia Red Barry

This plant was brought to the meeting of AOS judges in Ponce, Puerto Rico in April 10, 2016.   Home Depot stores have been bringing Tolumnia for sale since a few years ago.  Every time I pass by them I am tempted to buy.

Tolumnia Pink Panther, brought as a sacrificial victim to the gods of orchid culture, it surprised me by not only surviving but thriving.

In the past due to a poor understanding of their cultural needs, I sent many a Tolumnias to the great, happy terracota pot in the sky.  I became so frustrated at my inability to grow them that for many years refrained from buying them.  But last year I decided to try a different way of cultivating them.  As a sacrificial victim to the gods of orchid culture, I selected this plant which was on Home Depot on the spot where they put plants that have finished blooming before being sold.  I wanted to buy a cheap one so that if it did die It would not be a great loss.  I put this plant on a flat plastic dish on top of a very thin layer of moss, all the original roots were left exposed and not buried in the media.  

The plant gets full sun from sunrise to about 10 am and the rest of the day it is in light shadow.  I fertilize it weekly when it is producing a new fan.  The local temperatures are between 75 and 85 most of the year with low down to the sixties for a few weeks in January and February.

The plant has been growing well and finally bloomed this March.  Now that I know the way that I can keep them alive I plant to add one or two additional plants to my collection.  Hopefully they will do as well as this one.  The plant was identified by my friend, Rene Enrique Garcia Lopez.

Tolumnia variegata "in situ" in the Rio Abajo Forest, Puerto Rico, a plant that I have been watching since last year.

I have been watching this plant since last year when I spotted it blooming in September.  The plant is growing exposed to full sun in a decaying branch.  This year has been hard on this plant, there was a prolonged spell of lower rainfall during what is normally one of the wettest periods of the year.  This year's growths are smaller and look yellower and wrinkled in comparison with the relatively larger and plumper growths it had in 2014.  The inflorescences are smaller and have fewer flowers.  However this year it has produced more inflorescences than in 2014.  The branch where this orchid grows is dead and is decaying, it remains to be seen if it will last for another year.  It is not uncommon, as one walks thorough the forest after a storm, to find branches broken by the wind.  It may be that this will be the fate of this branch.  Should this happen I will relocate the plant to another branch in the same tree.

Tolumnia variegata, observations on a plant growing "in situ" on the Rio Abajo forest

As I walk through the forest I often see orchid plants growing in the trees.  Most of them are in predictable places where one would expect an orchid plant to survive and thrive.  But sometimes our expectations turn out to be wrong.  When I have found Tolumnia variegata growing in the Rio Abajo forest it has usually been growing in twigs under the shelter of the canopy.   But last week I found a group of plants growing in a leafless branch of an orange tree.  Far from been protected by a leafy canopy this group of plants is exposed to the worst of the tropical sun for most of the day.  From the orientation of the plant I surmise that the original plant germinated and grew in the underside of the branch.  But all the leafy growths are now on top of the branch, fully exposed to the sun

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The leaf fans are flat and are so oriented that at midday only the very narrow top of the leaf is exposed to the sun.  This orchid has a large network of roots that runs for many inches around it in the branch where it is perched.  The leaf fans are comparatively puny compared with other Tolumnia I have seen in the forest and are definitely stunted.  The inflorescences are small and have fewer flowers than plants that grow in more sheltered spots.  However the plant looks pretty healthy and it has several inflorescences on the way.

The plant is growing fifteen feet up in a tree.  I plan to monitor its growth and blooming over the next year.  I am particularly curious to see how this plant fares in such an exposed location during the dry season when a whole month can pass without any rain and humidity can be very low for our location. 

On occasion I have brought Tolumnia plants that have fallen from the trees to my shadehouse which is not far from where this tree is located.  All have eventually died.  I wonder why a plant that lives several years on the local trees around my house perishes when moved to my garden.  Perhaps observing this plant will illuminate this question.

Tolumnia (Oncidium) variegata, birds weaving this orchid into their nest

Tolumnia variegata, one of our most common native orchids

A nest of an unidentified species of bird

The orchid was originally weaved into the fabric of the nest, you can see the dried  leaves trapped in the fibers.  A new fan of leaves grew free of the nest and its now producing another leaf fan on top of a stolon.

Many years ago, as I was hiking in a local forest, I found an area where the local birds would weave orchids into the fabric of their nests.  It was a charming sight but unfortunately at the time I didn't have a camera with me.  I returned to the forest last weekend and managed to find a nest with an orchid.  When I visited this area, a long time ago it was almost pristine.  Now although there were signs of human visitation, to my utter astonishment, there was no trash anywhere.  Apparently whoever has visited the spot has been respectful of the area.  Sadly, I found the orchid population in the area was just a fraction of the size it was when I first visited.   

Tolumnia (Oncidium) variegata, a native orchid locally known as angel of the coffee plantation

Tolumnia variegata from Rio Abajo

Note the large and prominent callus at the center of the flower

Two flowers from a Rio Abajo plant

This fan of four leaves produced an inflorescence that is astonishly disproportionate to the size of the plant.  It can be seen the lower two pictures.  This is a Rio Abajo plant.

The several feet long inflorescence carried the flowers high over the host bush

Tolumnia hybrid

Tolumnia hybrid

The previous Tolumnia hybrid flower produced after the plant was grown in high light conditions in my garden

A Rodricidium hybrid that has Tolumnia in his ancestry

This little orchid is among the most widespread species of orchid native of the island of Puerto Rico.   I have seen it in many places in the island, from the moist forests of the Northern part of the Karst area to the dry scrub in the south west.   I have also seen this orchid in the island of Hispaniola in Santo Domingo.  The carefully manicured shrubs in the area of the Japanese Garden in the world famous Jardin Botanico of the capital of Santo Domingo have in their branches a dense population of this orchid.  The density of plants I saw among the branches of some of the shrubs in the Japanese Garden is among the greatest I have seen in any epiphytic orchid, the plants were tiny, had four fat and short leaves and were blooming abundantly at the time of my visit.  I have also seen this plant in coffee plantations that are at middle elevations in the central mountainous area of Puerto Rico as well as in coastal forest that is still reasonably intact.

This plant has an equitant arrangement of the leaves, this means the leaves are arranged in a flattened fan shape.  One of the peculiarities of this species is that plant size varies wildly even in areas where you would think all plants would be closely related.  In an area of less than one acre in the forest of Rio Abajo in Puerto Rico you can find small plants with four short and thick leaves that produce two of three flowers and larger plants with longer leaves that produce disproportionally huge inflorescences with dozens of flowers.  The largest plant of this species that I have ever seen was growing in the Guanica dry forest.  I saw it when I was walking through a small ravine in the forest where conditions were slightly moister than in the surrounding forest.  Growing in the understory, among the slender branches of a tall bush the plant I saw had long and slender leaves about four or five inches long.  The plant was growing with its roots spreading in the air in all directions, unattached to anything, the plant was tangled in the branches by its long stolon which joined the newest fan with the remains of older leave fans.  It could have been that the plant had fallen from a high branch, gotten tangled in the low branches and had kept growing unfazed by its new circumstances.

But no matter the size and shape of the leaves the flowers of all the plants are nearly identical.  There some plants that have a pronounced lilac coloring in the lip and floral segments, but I have seen those only in photos, I have never seen one of this type growing in the wild.  The flowers are constant in size with the flowers produced by the tiniest plants being only slightly smaller than those produced by the largest ones.

I have seen plants of this species in bloom in March sometimes in good numbers in favorable habitats.  However they can be common in highly modified habitats such coffee plantations and I have found from time to time plants growing in trees and bushes in urban areas and even in a tree in the central plaza of a small town.

People often collect these plants and they are seen from time to time at local orchid shows with relative frequency. Any time somebody makes a display of native orchids in an orchid show that falls on their blooming season this orchid is almost sure to be a present.  Puzzlingly, in spite of this being a common orchid, it seems few people are adept at keeping them alive in a long term basis.  The very few that I have found to be successful with this orchid, were growing them in their native haunts in conditions that closely resemble what they experience in nature.  I have observed a few plants growing in the wild and the lifespan seems to be relatively short.  None of the plants I have observed lasted more than five years from the time I found them and some disappeared after only two years of blooming activity.

Tolumnia hybrids made with other species of Tolumnia are highly valued by orchid growers and are relatively inexpensive and easy to find.  The flowers of the hybrids are often vividly colored and sometime feature lurid color combinations arranged in stripes and spots in ways seldom seen in other similarly sized flowers.

I have kept many hybrids of Tolumnia and a few have survived for a significant period of time under my care.  All have eventually died, mainly of root loss but also from what appears to be fungal/bacterial infections.  My guess is that there is a key feature of their habitat that I have failed to replicate in a consistent manner.  Of those the plants growing in the wild that I had have the opportunity to observe over several years, the plants that survive the longest are those growing among the leaves of the shrubs in the top part of the shrub where they get bright light filtered through the leaves most of the day and probably a bit of full sun at midday when sunlight is striking the shrubs at its most vertical.   I suspect that the leaves of the host shrubs also provide a microclimate of higher environmental humidity that insulates the plants against desiccation.

Few orchidists locally cultivate this species, probably because it is just too drab when compared with the hybrids and the fact that they are neither prestigiously rare nor difficult to replace.  Most of those that keep these orchids do so by dint of cutting a branch of the shrub tree where they are growing in the wild and bringing it into their collections.  Many of the plants collected this way survive happily, at least for a time, in captivity.

If you want to try to grow this plant in the Island of Puerto Rico I would advice to grow it inside a leafy bush that still allows a significant amount of light to sift through its leaves.  A particularly good host is the Higuera tree.  But please don’t go stripping our State Forests of this orchids, there are probably plenty growing in private lands and in coffee plantations.  Owners of coffee plantations have been known to rip out these plants from the coffee bushes in the mistaken belief that they are parasitic and drain the coffee bush of vigor.