Ceraia pseudoequitans' (Fessel & Lückel) M.A.Clem 2004, it is doing well in my garden, it has grow much in the last year.

February 2015

April 2014

This plant grew significantly during last year.   In the April 2014 photo you can see 14 inflorescences.  This plant has now 23 inflorescences simultaneously.  The increase in size can be attributed to good care with emphasis on making sure the plant was fertilized regularly during its growing season.  I use a fertilizer that is high in nitrogen for this plant.  It gets a few hours of full morning sun, the rest of the day it get sunlight filtered through the canopy of the tall trees that surround my house.

The plant is potted in stones.  I did this because it is a material that will not decay under the combination a hot rainy summer season with daily rain showers and regular nitrogen fertilization that can turn other media to slush in a single season. This plant has not been bothered by the usual culprit, which are slugs and scales.   I like the fact that it produces many stems during the growing season.

An unexpected problem is that since the plant is exposed to full sun during the morning, all the stems point to the side of the pot that gets the strongest light.  I will move the plant to a spot where it gets a lights from all sides during the day.  Also the stems are beginning to become crowded in the pot which means that I will have to repot them, something I dread to do to large specimen plants because some resent when you damage their roots and might sulk for a while or die even if you are extremely careful not to damage the roots during the repotting.

Dendrobium batanense or Ceraia pseudoequitans' (Fessel & Lückel) M.A.Clem 2004?

I brought this orchid because I was intrigued by its appearance and its growth pattern.  It adapted easily to my climatic conditions.  Because I was concerned that this plant roots could rot during the rainy season I planted it in limestone rock.   During the summer, in my locality, it can rain every single day for months.  The plant originally was potted in fine bark, but in my locality this media would have become waterlogged within days of the start of the rainy season.   Since the plant arrived in my garden it has been producing new canes steadily in a manner that doesn’t seem related to seasonality.   I suspect that if I fertilized the plant more heavily during the rainy season, the canes would be larger, but it hardly seems worth the bother to give more care to a plant that seems to grow well enough with standard care.

During the last two years this orchid has bloomed sporadically with small numbers of blooms.  But a strong rain event, in the middle of April, which is at the height of the dry season, seemed to stimulate this plant to produce buds.  During the weekend of April 19-20 the flowers opened.  A bit over one hundred flowers were present on 17 inflorescences.   A few inflorescences had only two or three flowers most had between six and eight. 

This plant has an untidy growth pattern that give it an appearance resembles a fright wig, so some grooming is desirable.  All the canes of my plant have grown toward the strongest source of light with the result that the plant is asymmetrical with all the canes hanging to one side.  I plan to move it to a place where it will get a more uniform exposure to strong light.   Unlike the flowers of its relative Dendrobium crumenatum, the flowers of Den. batanense last several days.