Phalaenopsis Ks Ever Green

This orchid was shown in the 2016 Puerto Rico orchid society show in the Jardin Botanico de Rio Piedras.

Coelogyne parishii Hook. f. 1862, a specimen plant

In the Puerto Rico orchid society show in San Juan in 2010, this plant won best specimen plant and also was awarded a CCM/AOS of 86 points.  This award recognizes the superior culture of an orchid.  I gave it the clonal name "Juan A, Rivero".   Professor Juan A. Rivero, or the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez,  gave me a two pseudobulb piece of this orchid the first time I visited his garden, in 1984.  This plant has been thriving under my care since that time.  This orchid tendency to produce two leads in each new growth allows it to become a large specimen plant in a relatively short time.  At the moment it was awarded it had 254 flower.  In 2011 it also produced a large quantity of flowers but I had to cut the leaves since they were in a lamentable state, probably due to unusually sunny and dry conditions in my garden.

La cotorra de Kramer Psittacula krameri, conocida en Ingles como "Rose ringed parakeet" , algunas variaciones de color

Perico princesa, Polytelis alexandrae una especie endemica de Australia

Una forma mutante

La especie con su coloración natural

Esta especie de perico es endémica de Australia.  No se conoce mucho sobre esta ave en su estado natural debido a que habita el interior desértico del país y porque son nómadas.  Esta especie se reproduce en cautiverio y existen varias formas mutantes.

Anolis evermanni Stejneger 1904, in the forest of Rio Abajo

Today I was cleaning the patio and decided to remove an accumulation of sticks and leaves that had developed under a clump of palm stems.  When I did this, I broke several tunnels that termites had made into the leaf litter mass.  As a result worker termites were exposed, as well as a few warriors.  This is not an unusual event so I continued cleaning.  Then I noticed that an Anolis evermanni was eating the worker termites.  Anolis evermanni are normally an even green color.  This one had an overlay of darer green bands.  I attribute this to the excitement caused by the presence of an abundance of prey.  Anolis evermanni has shown a breathtaking amount of behavioral flexibility in the laboratory.  From what I saw while taking the photos, this particular lizard regarded me as an annoyance, but also as essentially harmless.  That's why I could get so close to it.  These lizard see me daily as I do garden chores or just walk around.  This might explain the boldness of this one, or maybe it was very, very hungry.  Anolis only eat the workers, the warriors have dark pointy heads full of a distasteful toxic glue that the lizards seem to loathe.

Dos gupi endler machos, el multicolor hijo del blanco

A finales del 2013, en una reunión de la asociación de acuaristas de Aguadilla, me regalaron el gupi endler de la foto superior, junto con una hembra y una cría.  Me gusto mucho el pez por su color casi blanco y sin una sola mancha o raya, algo que nunca había visto en un endler, los cuales se caracterizan por tener manchas y rayas de diversos colores por el cuerpo.  Los peces se adaptaron muy bien a mis peceras, pero para mi sorpresa el primer macho en desarrollar color no se parece en lo mas mínimo al macho original.  Aislare una hembra para eventualmente aparearla con el macho blanco a ver si los hijos heredan el color del padre.  Si, se que los gupi hembras pueden guardar la esperma de varios machos por mucho tiempo.  Así que este proyecto puede que tome algunos meses en proceder ya que tengo que asegurarme que los hijos sean del macho blanco y no de otro de los machos.

Catasetum Orchidglade, curious hermaphroditic intersex flowers

Male flower

Intersex flower

Intersex flower

intersex flower

I have had this plant of Catasetum Orchidglade for about twenty years now.  It has bloomed many times during those years.  One thing that is interesting of Catasetum is that they normally produce imperfect flowers, those are flowers that instead of carrying both male and female parts are either male or female.    The male flowers are brightly colored, have a mechanism for shooting pollinia and are relatively numerous.  The female flowers are green, sack like, and only a few are produced in an inflorescence.  It seems that plants need to get full sun to be able to produce female flowers.¹

Rarely, Catasetum produces hermaphroditic intersex flowers.  In the case of my plant, all three flowers were slightly different in the expression of the male and female parts.  The male flowers, in the case of Catasetum Orchidglade, are bright red with some yellow/white spotting.  The female flowers are apple green.  Given this, you can easily see in the photos which parts of the flower express the male appearance and which are female.   I don’t have a clue as to what prompted this event.  With a single exception in which the plant produced female flowers, when I had this plant in full sun, all other bloomings to this date had been male flowers.

The wide variability in color, number and shape on the flowers of Catasetum was a real headache of orchid taxonomists when this genus was first found.    Much confusion occurred in England in the heyday of the orchid fever in the nineteen century when plants sent from Center and South America would bloom with flowers that were radically different from what the plant exporters had described to the buyers.  For amateur orchid growers this means that the culture they give the plant can make it produce flowers that don’t look like what they expected.   

¹Northen, Rebecca T.  1990.  Home Orchid Growing. Fourth revised edition

Gaeotis una semi lapa endemica de Puerto Rico

Personalmente siempre he asociado a los Gaeotis con los grandes bosques de palmeras Prestonea montana que dominan el dosel a ciertas altitudes de la sierra de Luquillo.   Es en los bosques de la Sierra de Luquillo donde he visto estos animales en su mayor abundancia y tamaño.   De vez en cuando me he encontrado uno de ellos en la cordillera central de la isla, pero nunca en la abundancia que lo he visto en las cercanías de El Yunque.  En Rio Abajo los asocio a áreas pantanosas y a la noche.  Por esta razón me sorprendió encontrar un Gaeotis en una de las canas de bambú que crecen en el aviario de Rio Abajo a plena luz del dia.  Es el caracol Gaeotis nigrolineata, digo a menos que le hayan cambiado el nombre de la especie  o hayan descrito otras especies recientemente.  Veo que hay algunas personas que la llaman Gae. flavolineata, pero no he podido encontrar la razón del cambio de nombre.  El área del aviario tiene periodos en que la lluvia satura el terreno y hay charcos por doquier, pero también hay meses en que deja de llover por varias semanas al punto que aparecen profundas grietas en el suelo.  Me imagino que la aparición de la Gaeotis fue causada porque el 21 de agosto de 2013 el aviario experimento 4.80 pulgadas de lluvia, casi toda en unas pocas horas entre el medio dia y las 6 pm.  Esta importante cantidad de precipitación causo la saturación del terreno y la aparición de niebla.   Aparentemente, por algunos días, el bosque de Rio Abajo ofreció las condiciones ambientales favorables como para que los Gaeotis estuvieran más visibles de lo usual.

Rhychodendrum Cabalgata en Verde

This orchid is a cross of Rhyncholaelia digbyiana  and Epidendrum ciliare.  Both species have notable fringed lips.   Epi. ciliare has green sepals and petals and a relatively narrow lip that is white with fringed side lobes and has a long central projection.  Rhyncholaelia dygiana generally has green sepals and petals and a wide, deeply fringed green lip.  The Epi. ciliare parent of this cross is a particularly fine representative of the species, its flower has the largest natural spead of any ciliare awarded under the AOS system and was awarded a FCC in 2011.  The Rhyncholaelia parent is the cultivar “Laura” AM/AOS.  When I saw this Rhychodendrum it had two inflorescences, one with two flowers and another with three.  The flower count is reduced from the number the Epidendrum parent produces because of the Rhycholaelia influence.  

The Epidendrum parent dominates the appearance of the flower of the cross.  The Rhycholaelia influence shows as a widening of the side lobes and of the projection of the lip that is a particular feature of the Epi. ciliare lip.  The plant form is similar to the Epidendrum parent.  Since I saw this plant early in the morning I could discern no fragrance, but since both species are known to produce fragrance at night, I would expect it to be fragrant after the onset of darkness.

I have learned that only a few plants of this cross survived to bloom.  I have been told that there are just two clones of this cross.  I was told the other clone has even wider flower segments and produces more flowers, I hope one day I will see it.  I have seen three Epi. ciliare crosses and in two the Epidendrum is dominant in the shape and size of the hybrid.  I the third, a cross with Blc. Toshie Aoki, the flower is much larger than ciliare but from the appearance of the flower you would have a hard time guessing that the other parent..