Sigmatostalix picta, small epiphyte from Ecuador

Close up of a single flower, note the strongly reflexed sepals and petals

Sigmatostalix picta

I found this little plant in many places along the trails in the Mindo area in Ecuador.  Most of the plants I saw were in branches that had fallen recently during a storm that had very strong winds.  The flowers are brightly colored.  The floral parts are strongly reflexed so that the most notable thing at first sight is the colorful lip.  The plant was also seen grown on the trunk of trees by the roadside and on a citrus tree that was growing over a small creek.  The common feature of the areas where I saw this orchid is the high humidity.  The local temperature never varies from a regime of 45F nights and 75 F days.  The plant themselves are nice looking as those that were in places where they got very bright light had a reddish coloring in their pseudobulbs.  

The orchid growing in situ

Epidendrum ramosum, an orchid native of Puerto Rico

An inflorescence

A large plant growing in the Sierra Palm forest

Dry inflorescences and three flowers, the flowers are near the center of the photo

A large clump growing among water tank bromeliads, the plant is right over the wine colored bromeliads

Epidendrum ramosum is a widespread species that has a geographical range that covers Central America, tropical South America and the West Indies.  In Puerto Rico it has been reported from moist areas at middle to high elevation from Camuy to Naguabo.  It grows as an epiphyte on the trunks of trees and palms.  I have seen this species in the Sierra de Luquillo, in El Yunque Mountain.  I have seen plants growing in the trunks of Sierra Palms forming untidy masses of stems.

The flowers are green, small and unremarkable.  Their shape and column immediately identifies them as Epidendrum.  The inflorescence consist of a few flowers that are produced on short stems, the flower peduncle is cradled in a green bract.  Because the flowers are small and the inflorescence is short, they are easy to miss amid the tangle of the stems and leaves.  This species has the peculiarity that the stems can produce many side branches which gives large plants a bushy appearance.

This plant is not in cultivation locally and as far as I know has not garnered any interest from the horticultural community.  Given its inconspicuous uninteresting flowers and general lack of features that would attract the attention of local growers, this species can only be seen in the wild.  In some parts of the Sierra Palm forest that grows along the road that goes to the high peaks of the Caribbean National Forest you can see plants of this species growing alongside tank bromeliads and a multitude of other epiphytic plants. 

Myrmecophyla (Schomburkgkia) grandiflora, an ant orchid from Central America

Head on view of a flower

The top view shows the ruffles of the flower segments

The flowers partly close at night

Note that the inflorescence has sustained some damage from insects feeding just under the scar of the first flower.  You can also see the sequential mode of flower production

A flower over a slab of limestone to show the color of the flower under sunlight

Myrmecophyla grandiflora, has a geographical distribution that ranges from Mexico to Colombia.  It inhabits dry areas where it grows both on trees and on rock.  The pseudobulbs of this species are hollow and it is said that in the wild there are always ant colonies inhabiting them.  It is reported that the pseudobulbs of this plant can reach up to 18 inches long and have two to five short coriaceous leaves on top.

A few years ago I was given a rootless three pseudobulb division.  I planted it in a custom made basket with no media (I was afraid that the plant would be attacked by an insidious disease but more on this below).  I tied the plant to the basket and watered and fertilized it like I do the Cattleya in my collection.  In due time the plant produced a new growth, after that it engaged in the copious production of roots, it repeats this cycle every year one or two times.  The plant did well in the basket but in due time it became clear that it would never reach its full potential with no media from which to draw moisture and fertilizer.  I then added some large, hard chucks of bark to its media, which the plant eventually enveloped with its roots.  However since it had started as a completely rootless division it took several years to achieve enough strength and size to bloom.

My plant produces two growths a year and sometimes tries to bloom from both of them.  Unfortunately the inflorescences of this orchid seem to be attractive in the extreme for some gnawing insects and I have lost a few to them.  Now I routinely give a slight dusting to my plant with some insecticidal dust to prevent any such critter from destroying them.  Given that these plants are hung on the shade house from wires about four feet long and the inflorescences are sometimes four feet long, the critters that eat them seem to be so highly motivated as to travel all this distance to munch on the tender inflorescence tip.  But use any insecticide with extreme care, and follow all instructions to the letter.  I, in particular have to be very careful as my shadehouse if full of fish tanks that could become contaminated with insecticide which would kill my beloved fish.

The flowers open widely in the morning but become floppy during the hottest hours of the day.  I am not sure if this happens everywhere but it is what happens in my garden.  The same thing is done by the flowers of Myrmecophila humboldtii in my garden.  The inflorescence keeps elongating and producing flowers for a few weeks.

I have found this plant to be generally problem free and a vigorous grower that can grow into a hernia inducing specimen plant.  The very long inflorescences can be an annoyance, as the flowers can end up so high up that you practically have to put the plant on the ground to enjoy them.  This plant responds well to constant watering and weekly fertilizer during its growing phase.  My plant produces very closely spaced pseudobulbs which mean I have to watch carefully when the new growth is forming so that it won’t get trapped in the media or the wire of the basket.

My plant is not growing in full sun, I have it under shade cloth, but one that allows a high percentage of the sunshine to pass through.  The sun in my location can be quite harsh on orchids, especially during the dry season, so I almost always give my plants some sort of protection from the sun during the hours surrounding noon and early afternoon.  Other Myrmecophyla that I have grown in full sun during the whole day have responded by becoming stunted.

This orchid seems indifferent to the local level of humidity although during the height of the dry season the pseudobulbs can become furrowed from water loss.  It gets watered once every week year round, along with whatever it gets from local rainfall.

I have always admired this plant but for many years I was hesitant to include it in my collection.  The reason was that I found that in my garden lurked a specially evil and insidious disease to which these plants were particularly vulnerable.  What makes this disease (I am not sure if it’s a fungi or a bacteria) exceedingly vile is that it won’t kill the whole plant, only the buds capable of new growth and a tiny area around them.  As a result of this damage the plant won’t grow or flower, but since everything else is ok, it still looks like it is in great shape.  I discovered this disease when my plants of Myrmecophila exaltata and a plant of Myrmecophila humboldtii would not grow or bloom for several years in a row.  I think I have found the way to stop or limit the damage this disease can inflict on my Myrmecophila.  I observed that all the plants that got this disease were planted in fairly water retentive media that was in contact with the stems on which the pseudobulbs sit.  By planting my orchids in fairly chunky media and keeping the base of the pseudobulbs a fraction of an inch over the media the disease seems to have been controlled.  So far tibicinis has not been molested by this dreadful disease.

Of all the Myrmecophyla orchids formerly known as Schomburgkia this is probably the one that is under the wider cultivation.   There is hardly any serious local orchid grower that doesn’t have at least one plant of this species.  There are also a number of hybrids of various sizes and colors that occasionally make their appearance at orchid shows but they don’t enjoy a fraction of the popularity of the Myrmecophila parent.  I have seen plants of this species of all sizes in the collections of various orchidists which makes me think that there is some variation on the plants available locally.  But all the flowers I have been able to examine were pretty similar regardless of the size of the plant that produced them.

In conclusion,if its minimum requirements of temperature and watering are met, this plant can survive almost every vicissitude that ordinarily sends other orchids to that great pot in the sky.   I have seen them growing equally vigorously in the hands of skilled growers as well as those of rank amateurs.

If you have any question just leave it in the comment section under the article.

Pleurothallis aristata, a highly beautiful but pretty small native orchid of Puerto Rico

A head on view of a flower

The fingertip in the photo can give a sense of scale to judge the size of the flower

Plants of this species growing in a dead branch that had fallen from a tree but was held up in the air because it had become tangled in a mass of vines

I have found Pleurothallis aristata in the upper reaches of the Luquillo Sierra.  Although it is considered uncommon I have not confronted much difficulty finding it.  I have seen it from time to time growing in trees and twigs alongside some roads.  The thing is that I have not found it for long in any particular place.  For a time many plants could be found growing on the trunks of the tree ferns in the higest of the visitor’s areas of the Caribbean National Forest of El Yunque but the last time I was there they all had disappeared.  I found a good cluster of plants on a tangle of fallen branches but these are doomed to die in the long run as the twigs decay in the eternal heat and moisture of the rainforest.  But I am sure I will find it again elsewhere if I keep a sharp eye out for it.  This plant has a vast geographical distribution which includes Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, the Windward Islands and Central and South America. 

The flowers of this plant are quite good looking but their tiny size and the fact that the flowers are displayed facing downward practically guarantees that in its natural habitat it will remain unnoticed except for a very few orchidists that are exceedingly fond of miniatures.  This plant makes small clumps that usually have a few inflorescences with open flowers or seed pods.  It is said to bloom from spring into summer.

I have not seen this plant in cultivation locally and very few orchidists in PR seem to be aware or interested in this plant.  The only photo of a flower similar to those I have seen in the wild in PR was from a plant growing in a collection in Paris, France.  Photos from other sites, such as orchidspecies.com, show flowers with somewhat different patterns that the ones I have seen in PR.

I suspect that with proper care this plant would be able to grow satisfactorily in the warmer coastal areas of Puerto Rico if someone desired to grow it.  But at the moment there seems to be absolutely no interest in this plant from the local horticultural community.

Grammatophyllum scriptum the most common Grammatophyllum, it has a plethora of varieties and forms

The green form sometimes called var. Crinitum

A particularly nice flower of the most common form

An oddly shaped flower with more green than purple

A small flowered type sometimes called multiflorum, which may be a different species or just a small flowered form

A well grown plant of Gramm. scriptum

I have not been able to grow this species with the same success as the other species of the Grammatophyllum genus that I have.  I am starting to wonder whether this has to do with the particular plants of this species that I brought.  So I probably will be trying to grow this species again in the future.  When well cared for this species can grow into a specimen plant of hernia inducing, disk slipping proportions.  Basically it can grow into as large an specimen plant as you are willing to carry around.   There are so many varieties and forms of this species available in the market that you can go all the way from gargantuan plants with towering inflorescences to tiny few flowered plants with inflorescences barely one feet long.

In my experience scriptum produces some of the largest root baskets I have ever seen.  I have concluded that successful care of this species depends on mantaining these root baskets in good condition.  You can read about the culture of these plants under the heading of Gramm. elegans.

Grammatophyllum elegans a delightful representative of this genus that doesn't need a gigantic space to grow and bloom

This is the normal flower of the species

An incomplete flower, the first few flowers to open
 at the base of the inflorescence tend to be this way

An inflorescence that has been allowed to grow in a pendulous manner

A mass of pseudobulbs showing a very modestly sized root basket

A mature plant blooming, the inflorescence has been trained horizontally
 for better display.  Notice the heftly log needed to keep
 the plant upright against the weight of the inflorescence.

Grammatophyllum Tiger Paw a hybrid (elegans x scriptum) 
just after its removal from a plastic pot

The tree fern plaque in which Gramm. elegans grew originally, notice the 
large ferns and begonias and sundry plants growing on the plaque.

I brought this plant as a seedling around 1990, I think I brought it from H&R orchids in Hawaii.  Following the recommendations of other orchid growers and from seeing plants in orchid shows, I planted mine in a slab of tree fern.  The plant thrived and by 1993 it was flowering.  But them the plant started to decline.  At first I was puzzled because there had been no significant change in any parameter relating to the care of the plant and it had not been attacked by any pest.  But then I noticed that the fern plaque was becoming harder and harder to keep clean of ferns, begonias, and other assorted plants that would grow with wanton abandon anytime I became careless in weeding them out.  The reason for the decline became clear when I noticed that the base of the root basket these plants make had died and was decaying.  It turned out that the fern plaque, as it decayed, was holding too much water.  This meant that the root mass of the Grammatophyllum would never dry at the base; this meant death for the active roots and accelerated decay for the dead ones.

In the end, my formerly large plant, became three clusters of sorry looking pseudobulbs with few live roots.  I decided to try something different with this species.  I potted the plants in plastic pots that had a small reservoir of water at the bottom.  The pot was filled with rocks, Styrofoam and bark pieces.  The plants were tied on top of the pots because they had few living roots to anchor them in the media.  With time the little plants sent their roots into the pots and then began producing their characteristic root basket.  I repotted these plants in 1994 and they are still in the original plastic pots.  However, at the same time they are not in the pots at all, what happened was that as the plants grew in size they produced a large root basket and as pseudobulbs grew upward the living roots essentially abandoned the pot and grew into the mass of the root basket composed of the previous year root growth.  Nowadays the plants are still attached to the plastic pots by their massive root mass but the living roots are all independent of the pot.  I have not removed the pots because they are a convenient counterweight when the plants produce their massive inflorescence.

If there is any advice that I consider most important in the care and culture of this plant is that you should strive to keep the root basket that these plants naturally produce around their pseudobulbs in a good state.  This means that you should allow the root basket to dry between waterings to avoid killing the roots.  If the root basket decays  this can cause a severe setback for your plant.  Actually the key is allowing the best possible drainage and plenty of air flow around the root mass as it is not excess water that kills the roots but lack of oxygen.

This plant can produce an impressively large, massive inflorescence that can seem at odds with the size of the plant.  I recommend this orchid to those that don’t have space to grow Grammatophyllum speciosum but can accommodate a smaller plant.  So far Gram. elegans has proved to be relatively easy to care as long as you respect its need to have exposed roots that are not kept wet all the time.

Unlike Gramm. speciosum, Gramm. elegans doesn’t take a decade to grow to blooming size, its blooming seems to be controlled by the size of the last mature pseudobulb.  It has been my experience that large pseudobulbs that are at least four or more inches tall will bloom, smaller ones won’t.  The larger the size of the pseudobulbs of a given plant the more spectacular the inflorescence.  A relatively small plant with pseudobulbs five or six inches tall can produce an inflorescence five or six feet tall with dozens of large flowers.   Inflorescences can grow to such size and weight that they can destabilize the plant so care is needed to fasten the pot of the plant firmly to its basket or base.  Inflorescences can be staked or allowed to grow in a pendulous manner.  I have both trained inflorescences upright and allowed them to hang naturally and I personally prefer the trained ones.  The only significant problem when this plant is blooming is the need to keep the inflorescence safe from snail and slugs which seem capable of sensing the tender tip of the inflorescence from afar.

Media: Any material that resists decay, after the root basket formed, none.

Potting: First on well drained plastic pots, then on a very strong metal basket.

Fertilizing: 20-20-20 every week during the growing season. When it has a root basket of a significant size I put a few pieces of very dry horse manure on top of the root mass at the start of the growing season and keep replacing them as they degrade and are washed away by the rain.  Feeding this plant conscientiously during its growing season is the key for producing the large pseudobulbs that are the key to blooming this species.

Light: Full morning sun, light shade after midday, It gets this regime because it is what is available on the only spot that I had to put this plant.

Temperature: From 95F high during the day in summer to 60F during the night in winter.   

Campylocentrum filiforme, a bizzare native orchid that challenges our concept of what an orchid must be

Campylocentrum filiforme, the stems visible in the photo are new and old inflorescences and not the main plant body which is buried under the roots

The roots you see criss crossing the branch in the photo are the orchid, no leaves or stem is visible, inflorescences with seed pods are visible in the center of the photo

A close view

A close up shows the roots which look silvery white when they are dry but turn green when wet, both live and dead roots are visible in the photo

Campylocentrum filiforme ranks among the most bizarre of all of our native orchids.  What people universally regard to be the “orchid”, and I am referring here to the plant body, in this species has become reduced to an extreme degree.  The stem of this plant has been reduced to the point that it barely reaches a centimeter in length.  And the centimeter of stem that comprises the plant body is practically invisible due to the many roots that surround it.  In this species the roots dominate to such an extent that the plant is predominantly a tangle of roots with the stem forming a vanishingly small proportion of the biomass of the plant.

As a result this plant is the orchid world equivalent of a ghost.  Due to the apparent absence of a stem most people fail to recognize this plant as an orchid or even as a discrete plant.  Perhaps a particularly observant person might notice that there are orchid roots growing around the twigs and branches but since there are no leaves in sight anywhere it is probably that it will fail to perceive that the tangle of roots itself is the orchid.

This orchid is regarded as among the most advanced, from an evolutionary stand point, of all orchids.  The plant has abandoned the stem as a locus of photosynthesis and has shifted this function entirely to the roots.  What advantage can this radical departure from the norm of the plant world can this adaptation give this orchid?

The most accepted theory is that the leave less condition of the plant allows it to survive on the meagrest of resources, in a niche where no other plant can compete successfully or even survive.  These plants are mainly found in places where humidity is abundant such as swamps and moist forest areas but I have them also growing in disturbed areas.   Because they depart from most people conception of what a plant must be they are utterly invisible to the average person.  Because they survive with such limited resources these plants are not known to produce large or showy flowers but there are a few exceptions.

 Dendrophylax lindenii, the Florida Ghost orchid, another leave less species of orchid, made news all over the world when a plant in a reserve produced nine flowers at the same time, an unusual event.  The plant itself could hardly be distinguished in the photos from the bark of the tree where it was growing so, on first sight, the inflorescences with their large showy flowers looked like they were springing from the trunk of the tree.

Campylocentrum filiforme is classified as a rare orchid by Ackermann in his book on orchids of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.  But it may be that it is more abundant that records indicate given its stealthy nature.  Apparently nothing is known about the pollination of this species.  It is not in cultivation and probably almost all local orchid growers are unaware that these plants exist.  I have never seen then on exhibition even in shows where there have been displays specifically devoted to native orchids.  Seems to be short lived in the wild as all the plants I monitored died when the twigs in which they were growing decayed.

Leochilus puertoricensis a small epiphytic orchid endemic of Puerto Rico

The flowers are green these look slightly yellowish because they were photographed when full sun was shining on them

You can see on this plant the remains of two inflorescences that failed to set seed

In this case the inflorescence is long enough to bring the flowers out of the shade

Two plants growing and blooming on a branch of a guava tree.

A plant growing on a guava branch

The first time I saw this small orchid was about twenty five years ago in El Cañon de San Cristobal.  I was hiking along the Cañon’s floor when I came across a tiny plant of this species lying on the ground with the remains of the twig it had been clinging still attached to its roots.  I was fascinated with the tiny plant and took the took it home.  A few weeks later I was surprised when an inflorescence came out of the plant that up to that time I had thought belonged to a seedling Oncidium altissimum.  When the first inflorescence lost its flowers the plant bloomed again.  I didn’t know the identity of the orchid as at that time there was not much information around on native orchids.  The plant died a few months after it finished blooming and I always wondered what I had done to make the plant die under my care.  For many years afterwards I never saw this orchid again, even when I visited and camped in areas that are within its geographical area of distribution.  This Leochilus was described in 1986 as Leochilus puertoricensis by Mark W. Chase.

In 1999 I started working as leader of the captive propagation program of the Puertorrican parrot project so I moved to the aviary which is in the heart of the Rio Abajo forest.  I was always on the lookout for this orchid but for the first few years I never saw it.  Then one day as I was walking around the aviary grounds I noticed a tiny orchidaceous leaf sticking out of the moss covered base of a Croton ornamental bush.  Intrigued by the leaves I started searching the area and found several seedlings growing in the stems of the Croton bushes.  In due time these orchids bloomed, set seed and then died.  I have seen this cycle repeated several times in the eleven years that I have lived at the aviary.  You find a few scattered seedlings on guava or Miconia trees, the seedlings grow rapidly, bloom, produce seed capsules, scatter the seed and then inevitably die.   One baffling characteristic of this species is that the plants always die after blooming and setting seed, even those plants that seem to be in places that appear to be ideal for their continual long term survival.

At this moment in the aviary you can’t find any plants of this species in any of the trees that have hosted them in the previous years.  You can say the same thing about Campylocentrum, Ionopsis and Tolumnia orchids in the aviary, in my early years in the aviary they were so common I never gave them a second though, now with the exception of Ion. satyrioides all have disappeared from the area of the aviary.  I only hope I am still here the day they return.

Leochilus puertorricensis is not in cultivation or has any horticultural importance but on rare occasions you can find wild collected plants in orchid collections.  Every time you can see that the roots are still attached to remnants of their twing or branch perch.   So far I have known of no plant that has shown long term survival in captivity even when the plants were put into a trees in areas where this species grows naturally.

Cochleanthes flabelliformis the Puerto Rican orchid with the largest flowers

Cochleantes flabelliformis, note that the lip has some damage, probably caused by animals or insects.

A newly open flower, of a plant in situ

Aside view of the flower

A mature flower, in a plant in situ

A developing seed pod

The seed pod has been raised using a dry twing to allow for a better  photograph.  Notice the Caracolus caracolla snails under the plant.

There are three flowers that I regard as the Holy Grail of wild orchid photographers in Puerto Rico.  One is Lepanthes eltoroensis, of which I know of a single photo taken in the wild.  Another is Sudamerlycaste barrintoniae of which I know of only one poor photo from the pre-digital times.  The last is Cochleanthes flabelliformis of which I had never seen a photo of a plant from Puerto Rico growing in the wild.  All these orchids are considered quite rate and the location of known populations (for obvious reasons) are well kept secrets.  So you can imagine my excitement when a botanist friend that knows my interest in photographing this orchid informed that he had located a plant.

Although a plant was accessible for photographing, as is the often the case with orchids, it was not blooming so I had to patiently wait for the blooming season to arrive, I checked the plant from time to time until in August 2008 when I was overjoyed to discover that it started showing signs that it was going to bloom .  The plant, a relatively weak specimen growing in deep shade, eventually produced a single flower.   The flower was somewhat different from what I have seen in pictures and drawings of this species, as you can see in the photo.

The flower produced a seed pod which I was able to photograph before it opened sometime after December.  The plant bloomed again in 2009 and produced a larger flower which I attribute to it getting more light courtesy of some help from a passing orchidist.  This flower didn’t produce a seed pod.  In 2010 the plant seemed to die, only a stump and some dead looking roots remained as evidence of its existence.  But in November of 2010 a tiny side shoot appeared on the side of the dead root mass so this plant may yet bloom again.  If it ever does so I will be ready to get more photos.

This plant is a mystery to me in the sense that even though it is horticultural desirable, being the largest flowered orchid native of Puerto Rico, I have not seen it anywhere in cultivation in Puerto Rico either in local orchid collections or in orchid shows.  Since over collection from the wild has been given as a reason for this plant rarity I would have expected to see it at shows and at local collections.   But this is not the case, in fact the only time I have seen a exhibit that purported to show a specimen of this orchid the plant was actually Cochleantes discolor.

My suspicion is that this orchid does not survive in cultivation in local collections.  I know there are local orchid growers of unsurpassed skill which can maintain rare and difficult to grow orchids alive and thriving for years and years, but those are a small minority.  The majority of local orchid growers are totally unfamiliar with the environmental needs of orchids native to the forests of the mountainous interior of the island.  This means that almost all of the orchids collected from the central highlands usually die slow lingering deaths at the hands of hobbists whose enthusiasm surpasses their knowledge.

Although this plant is rare and local in the wild I don’t think it is in danger of extinction.  The remaining populations are in pretty rugged terrain which is extremely unlikely to be haunted by orchid growers.   Perhaps someone could gather a seed pod and make it available to the orchid community so that nobody had the need or the interest to get plants from the wild?  I will keep this thought in mind.

A curious thing that mystified me was that I found two large Caracolus caracolla snails resting in the leaf litter just under the leaves of this orchid.  These snails are voracious eaters of tender orchid leaves and stems.  Why they ignored the comparatively thin leaves of this orchid instead of devouring them completely is a small mystery.

Ionopsis satyrioides, an orchid native of Puerto Rico that is a twig epiphyte

Close up of a flower 

A close up of the inflorescence

Inflorescence on the plant

Sometimes the seed will germinate on dead leaves

Ionopsis satyrioides is an epiphytic orchid that I have seen in the Rio Abajo forest and elsewhere in the island of Puerto Rico.  I have found it growing as a twig epiphyte on the branches of wild guava trees.  I have seen the lifecycle of this orchid unfold in a wild grove of guava trees.  In the first stage the seedlings invade the branches and twigs of a tree.   Most of the twigs that host them die, sometimes a whole branch will die.  As the twigs die their leaves fall and the orchids are exposed to full sunlight.  The mature plants, which are fairly small, then produce their few flowered inflorescences.   Many of the flowers are pollinated and produce seed.  By the time the seed pods have opened and released the seeds the twigs are in an advanced state of rot and most of the plants fall to the ground and die.  Sometimes if the guava tree is small and has been colonized by a large number of orchids, the entire tree will die.  I have rescued fallen plants and set them on other branches but they die anyway after they fall from their tree of birth.  On rare occasions you can see plants of this species in captivity, almost all with their roots still clinging to the remains of the twig where they grew in the wild.  But the existence of these plants in captivity seems to be as ephemeral as the life of the fallen plants in the wild.