Bulbophyllum biflorum flower and two flies fighting over it

These flies are usually quite wary as in the garden there are a plethora of predators that think of flies as convenience food. However it seems the smell of this Bulbophyllum biflorum had them entranced to such a degree that they would not move from the flower even when I approached very closely. When I shooed one away the other one would quickly jump on the flower. When both landed on the flower a scuffle ensued and one was thrown from the flower. I could not help but think of two gunslingers that were waiting to see who would make the first move. I have tried to detect a smell but it I can't smell anything. Perhaps other people who have this plant can describe the smell. I assume it is a fecal smell due to the type of fly that is attracted to the flower. Even though ordinarily I would shoo the flies away as to prevent them removing the pollen and causing premature folding of the flowers, in this case I am going to allow the poor blighters some leeway. The truth is that the life of these flies must be one big and smelly pile of s**t, so if they are trying to get their jollies in much pleasanter surroundings I will not be the one to deprive them of the opportunity.

Bletia patula a pale color form

This flowers show a typical coloration,

they were growing a few feet from the pale colored flower.

A very pale flower of Bletia patula

Every so often I grab my backpack and hike into the island forests looking for orchids. I was lucky enough to secure the company of a friend who is just giving up smoking and was quite desperate for anything that would keep his mind off smoking and him away from other smokers. After a few hours of hiking we came upon a huge area where, for some reason, the all vegetation was killed some years ago by the government. Plants have been slow to colonize this patch but you could see here and there small Bletia patula plants growing inter sped with a host of pioneer plant species, mostly grasses. Unfortunately there was only a single B. patula plant in bloom that I could see in the whole area. When I was photographing the plant my friend calling at me from some distance away telling about a plant that might be an orchid. Looking at the plant from a distance I assumed that probably it was the white form of Spathoglottis plicata, which can be found by the thousands in some valleys in the central mountains. But I decided to take a look just in case. When I got near the plant i realized that it could be a Spathoglottis, it had the wrong shape and the inflorescence was too short. Initially I was quite excited at the prospect of having found an alba form of Bletia patula, however the buds were light pink even if the flower was almost white. I have seen groups many thousands of plants of B. patula in many places in the northwestern part of the island and I have never seen a white form. I might be wrong but as far as I know only one alba form of this species has ever been found. This plant is not an alba, but what it could be called, a near alba, semi alba? I am posting a photo here in the hope that someone who knows more about this species might offer some enlightening comment on this plant. By the way I didn't collect this plant, I can't say I wasn't mighty tempted but decided that it will remain in place until I can ascertain if the government plans to eradicate the plants in the area again. In case that the government has plans to keep killing the vegetation in this spot(I think it is done with herbicides) I will move the plant to a secure place inside a state forest where I can keep visiting it. It is possible that I would have missed this plant completely if my friend had not looked at it closely mainly because I would not have associated the light color flowers nodding in the distance with B. patula flowers.

Psychilis krugii at Guanica State Forest

On February 27, 2006, I went to Guanica State Forest to try to find and photograph some variations of the orchid Psychilis krugi. The area is very dry and hot and during the "wet" season it is also horribly mosquito infested (now is the dry season). I had a hard time finding somebody to accompany me. I asked a female friend if she could go with me. I told her that there would be poisonous plants, the odd loathsome insect and fearsomely prickly cactus. She said that she would go since it would be a refreshing change from having to deal with her ex-husband.I went to an area that is rarely visited as the most well traveled areas have been nearly stripped of orchids.We had to hike for a while but when we arrived we found hundreds of plants but very, very few flowers. In fact we saw only three flowers. However the plants had many inflorescenses and probably in a month or two there will be a huge number of flowers.

Tetramicra elegans in the southwest of Puerto Rico

Tetramicra elegans habitat in Puerto Rico

Tetramicra sp, a plant in an orchid collection, the yellow mark in the lip characteristic of elegans is apparently absent.

Tetramicra elegans, wild plant


A flowering in the wild


Tetramicra plants, growing in the shade of some low shrubs

On December 10 2006, I spent most of the day walking around in the Sierra Bermeja hills. This is a line of hills that go from east to west along western part the south coast of Puerto Rico. I wanted to see how many orchids in bloom I could find. When I visited these hills some twenty years ago I found Vanilla, Encyclia, Epidendrum, Psychilis and Tetramica plants. Unfortunately I found very few orchids in bloom. I saw just one plant of Psychilis, probably P. krugii but since it had no flowers it was impossible to say for sure. Most of what I found was a large number of invasive pioneer species. A huge area was completely dominated by a grass, Panicum maximum that was about five feet tall and made walking difficult. Not even a single orchid was found in the area dominated by the Panicum grass.

 After almost three hours of walking up and down a rugged hilly terrain we arrived at an area that mostly devoid of grass, with justa few tough, low, scrawny looking shrubs and low palm trees. In this spot, under the shrubs, were the Tetramicra plants. There was no soil visible just a rocky pavement. The Tetramicra plants were growing under the shrubs in a tangle of growths with most of the plants a few inches over the gravel. The plants roots were thick and whitish. The roots held the plants in a stilt like way, two to three inches over the gravel, it appears the roots went some way under the gravel. Most plants seemed to have only two or three roots under each growth. Although there were dozens, if not hundreds, of growths under each shrub, very few were in bloom in the area I examined.  

The plants are dull colored and hard to see. Most of the plants are quite small, two or three inches tall and showed no sign of having bloomed. The plants I found in bloom were four to five inches tall. The inflorescences were about a foot tall and raised the blooms just barely over the surrounding vegetation. Two of the inflorescences had branches but only one of the branches was blooming. Although it seems there are probably many thousands of plants in the area I visited it is probable that they were more widespread in the past in the area invaded by the Panicum grass. I talked for a while with a local denizen and he remarked that the spread of the grass has been probably due to wetter weather that usual in the area. He also said that there had been some large fires in the grassy area. Another area person said that the grass had invaded some areas of the hills that used to be almost bare loose gravel. I suspect that human activity in the form of cutting down native vegetation, might have been an important factor in allowing the grass to dominate the area so completely.

 By the time my group reached the area where the Tetramicra grew it was late in the day and I had little time to make habitat observations. Here are some of these observations.Temperature: Temperatures can reach into the high nineties in summer during the day. Between December and February night temperatures can go down to the low sixties, most often, night temperatures are in the middle seventies range.  Substrate: Loose gravel composed of angular pebbles, the plants were growing over the gravel with the roots going into crevices and cracks in the rocks and gravel. Light: This spot gets very harsh full tropical sunlight, with little relief from clouds for prolonged spells as the area has a pronounced dry season. However the plants are growing under bushes where they get some protection from the sun.  Watering. Although this particular area has a seasonally wet and dry season, there is a nearby lagoon that supplies some humidity to in the form of fog year round.  Blooming: In volume four of Withner’s book series about Cattleya relatives, Tetramicra elegans is said to bloom between January and March. This might explain the scarcity of blooming specimens during my visit.