The Orchid a book by Lauren Gardiner and Phillip Cribb, a beautiful book with 40 botanical prints

 

This book is my birthday present to myself.   Why I brought it?  Because its beautiful.  The authoritative text is the frosting on top of the cake.  Along with the book there are 40 botanical prints.  The orchids in the prints are described in the text.  The prints are suitable for framing. 

Dendrobium discolor Lindley 1841, 'Karlo Javy' AM/AOS, this plant has a particularly nice color. It was awarded last March in Puerto Rico

When mighty forest giants fall

On May 4 I was hiking in the El Yunque forest.  In my hike came across two large trees that had fallen.   One was largely intact, the other had fallen on a road and had been cut in pieces. When I saw them I could not help thinking of what happened when an ancient Chinese emperors died.  When the emperor died, a number of servants and other people were sacrificed to accompany the emperor in his afterlife.  In the case of these trees, they were laden with epiphytic orchids which face certain death in the forest floor.  In the tree that fell in an open area most orchids died from sunburn.  In the one that fell in a shady spot, the orchids are still alive but will eventually die when the trunk rots away,  There were Lepanthes, Pleurothallis, Ornithidium, Jaquiniella, Epidendrum as well as others I could not ID.  I didn't collect any of them, the forest is in a protected area and collection is forbidden.  Also these orchids live in a habitat that provides very, very high humidity along with brisk air movement, this is not a combination that the average orchid grower can easily provide.

Sometimes I use Styrofoam cups instead of foam chips or stones to increase drainage and aireation of the media in which large orchids will grow.

One of the problems of potting very large orchids is that there is the possibility that the large mass of potting media will retain too much water and become anoxic (devoid of oxygen), something that is lethal to orchid roots.   When I had to pot a Grammatophyllum speciosum, I put four styrofoam cups in the bottom of the pot.  I made many holes in the sides of the styrofoam cups to allow air to flow.  I poured the media, in this case bark, over the cups.  As you can see the Grammatophyllum developed a large and healthy root system.  I had to repot because the orchid had become too top heavy.  Because of this, when I pot Grammatophyllums I usually add a layer of gravel to the bottom of the pot to give it stability.  Unfortunately, these plants grow so large that they need the heaviest of pots to keep them stable.

Maxillaria coccinea [Plum] L.O.Williams 1954, a lot of plants growing together in a tree in a Puerto Rico rainforest

Something happened to this tree trunk that seemed to have made it very favorable for the germination and growth of Maxillaria coccinea orchids.  There were dozens of plants growing all together.  None of the plants had bloomed so they are young still.  My suspicion is that a storm broke the top of the tree, making the remaining branches an ideal place for these orchids to colonize.

Myrmecophyla (Schomburgkia) humboldtii an ant orchid from Venezuela

A fully expanded mature flower

A paniculate inflorescence

Note that several of the flowers are partly closed, this is normal

A plant on a wire after one year of growth

The same plant as before but after three years of growing hanging from a wire

Roots are produced in a single massive burst

An ant patrolling the plant, the pseudobulbs are hollow and house ant colonies

When I was given this plant as a gift, many years ago, I had little information on its blooming habits, growth patterns and cultural needs.  In those ancient “pre-Internet” times finding information about an obscure species of orchid meant going to a university library and hoping they had a book about orchids that would give you some guidance.  Unfortunately even when you found some information about your plant often the information was in the form of a taxonomic description with no details of its cultural needs.

As a result of this lack of cultural information this orchid remained a mystery to me. The issue was that growing this plant proved easier than pie, however getting it to bloom seemed an impossible dream.  So year after year my plant would grow into an ever expanding gargantuan specimen plant with no blooming ever.  Eventually the Internet entered my life and through places like The Orchid Source forum I began to exchange information with people that actually grew this plant in its natural habitat in Aruba.  Myrmecophylla (Schomburgkia) humboltii is native of Venezuela and can also be found in the Netherland Antilles.  

Then I found that I had misunderstood what this plant needed to bloom and was growing it too shady.  It needs full sun to bloom but it also needs to produce large and strong pseudobulbs.  Also I found that the roots and the inflorescence are extremely vulnerable to insects and snails which will travel long distances to attack the tender parts of the orchid as they are growing.

To get the best out of this plant you need to give it particularly careful attention when it is in the growing part of its seasonal cycle and when it is producing roots.  Full sun has to be accompanied with frequent applications of fertilizer and abundant watering.  If these are neglected during this plant growing phase the pseudobulbs will be small and most probably will abort their inflorescences if they even try to produce them.  Medium sized pseudobulbs will produce racemose inflorescences that will have a few flowers open at the same time.  But if you manage to get this plant to produce the largest pseudobulbs possible the inflorescence will become paniculate with several flower bearing branches.

I have discovered that under my conditions potting this plant is not a good strategy.  It grows well and flowers acceptably when growing on a dead tree where it gets abundant sun.  But my best growing plants and the ones that bloom best are growing hanging from wires with no material or slab to grow on.  I have no idea why this is so, it seems counter intuitive but there is no denying that the ones growing completely in the air do better under my climatic conditions.

My plants bloom between winter and spring if the inflorescences manage to develop without being damaged.  It has been my sad experience that the inflorescences of this plant in particular seem to be an irresistible treat to insects, millipedes and snails.  Even hanging the plant high doesn’t deter the pests from attacking the tender inflorescences.  So when I see an inflorescence start to develop I give the plant a light dusting of an insecticidal dust.  It has been darkly satisfying to find the dead insects that strived to make a savory dish from the inflorescences.  Since there are many fish tanks around where I grow the orchids I use insecticides with extreme caution and precision and follow the label indications to the letter.

The flowers of this orchid are lovely and among the most full of the genus.  But someone visiting the garden around the hottest hours of the day could be excused if he/she found the flowers disappointing.  The reason is that the flowers are at their best in the early morning and when the day turns hot they turn floppy and partially collapse, only to perk up the next day.  Because the inflorescence produces just a few flowers at a time this plant can be blooming for a few weeks as the inflorescence elongates.  The flowers of this orchid continue expanding in size for the life of the bloom and achieve their largest size just before collapsing.

This plant is highly esteemed in horticulture and due to its ease of culture it is fairly common among local orchid collections.  A an often heard complaint is that it is shy blooming but this comes from growers that keep their plant under shadier conditions than those conductive to blooming or that have undersized plants due to lack of proper fertilization and watering during their growing season.  There is a rare white flowered variant of this species but I have yet to see a plant in bloom of this variety even though I know of people that have grown it successfully.

This orchid has hollow pseudobuls which are colonixed by ants. My plants host several species of ants but usually the one that is most conspicuous is a yellow one with a particularly nasty sting.  Unfortunately the presence of the ants doesn’t seem to deter the pests.    

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.

Dendrobium hybrid culture

Dendrobium Thongchai Gold

Each year vast multitudes of these popular Dendrobium hybrids are sent to that great orchid terracota pot in the sky by well meaning growers. The problem that Dendrobium that are descended from crosses of the Sphatulata and the Phalaenopsis section of Dendrobium pose to the average grower is both perplexing and contradictory. On one hand they are heavy feeders that demand good watering and fertilizing when growing, on the other, overwatering and too much fertilizer are deadly to these orchids. As a result these plants are carefully cared by people who love them in ways that slowly but surely kill them. The first error is potting these plants in an overly large pot, this is a death sentence. These plants need good oxygenation of the roots, a mix that has poorly ventilated spots or even anoxic areas will kill the roots in no time. The best solution is to pot these plants in pots that allow for plenty of air flow. This last week end I was visiting relatives in a seaside area of the town of Rincon. People there cultivate these dendrobiums on palm trunks. Putting most orchids in a palm trunk that has the consistency of concrete, in full sun, in an area subject to strong winds and the occasional sea spray is almost a sure death sentence, these Dendrobium however survive and even thrive. Since a photo is worth a thousand words here are some photos so you can see for yourself how these plants do under conditions that most plants would find too severe to survive.

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.

Dendrobium densiflorum, culture

A fully mature flower of Den. densiflorum

An inflorescence

Dendrobium densiflorum is an orchid that is widespread in the south of Asia. I got my plant from a friend that got tired of waiting for it to bloom. When I got the plant it had canes that were about a foot tall and had scars that showed that in the past, before my friend had it in his possession it had apparently bloomed. I put it in a pot made out of a plastic soda bottle and put it with my other Dendrobium without too much hope of ever seeing flowers. The plant initially had a measly root ball, but under my care it started producing a significant number of new roots. In 2005 it produced a cane larger than any before, this happened again in 2006 and 2007 when it produced a cane almost two feet long that dwarfed all previous canes. In 2007 it produced its first inflorescence. I suspect that even though the climate might not have been conductive to blooming, this plant was probably immature during the time my friend had it and what we took for inflorescence scars might have been aborted inflorescence buds, something that immature or weak plants sometimes produce. My plant is growing vigorously with routine care and hopefully in the future it will be strong enough to produce multiple inflorescences.

How do I cultivate it.

Light: Full sun most of the morning, dappled sunlight the rest of the day, but much care is taken that the plant is not so exposed as to get sunburn.Temperature: 85F day in summer with a 10F degree drop at night, 75F day between September and April with a 10F degree drop at night.

Watering: Daily when it is producing new growth, when new growth matures all supplemental watering is suspended and it only gets water when it rains.Fertilizer: Weekly diluted 20-20-20 when it is in full growth, none after the cane matures. Organic fertilizer is also used to help the canes to plump up.

Humidity: The climate supplies a humidity level from 70 to 80 percent during the day.

Media: Medium sized bark.Potting: The middle tube of a plastic soda bottle was used, the media was held in by a very open wire bottom that allows for decayed media to fall.

Repotting: The plant was allowed to become pot bound, but it is in need of re potting because the canes have begun to grow against the side of the pot.Seasonality: It gets little special care when not growing or blooming, it gets concentrated care when it is producing new growths as canes grow relatively fast.

This is a magnificent plant that is quite rewarding if you are able to give it the growing conditions it needs. Sadly the flowers are short lived and last only five to six days. I have another plant that was also labeled densiflorum but that has not bloomed even when it achieved a large size. However its canes are deeply furrowed which makes me think it may be thysiflorum. The thyrsiflorum plant grows very well and it’s very hardy but has not shown any inclination to bloom even after ten years under my care.

Pests: Snails and slugs may eat the tender canes but little else seems to bother this plant in my location. Unfortunately the bright color of the inflorescence seems to attract all the thrips in the local area and they will converge of the inflorescence and damage it if it is not protected. (I usually take the plant indoors when its in bloom). Unfortunately thrips seem to find these flowers so alluring that they will wallow through a thick slurry of Sevin dust to sink their thrice accursed mouth parts in the flower, they then die in transports of ecstasy all the while spoiling the flowers with their unsightly little bodies.


A link to the most recent blooming of this species in my collection
http://ricardogupi.blogspot.com/2011/03/dendrobium-densiflorum-revisited-march.html

Habenaria monorrhiza, a native orchid of Puerto Rico

Habitat

I took a longer than usual vacation this December and used the extra time to drive around and photograph orchids. One of the plants I found was Habenaria monorrhiza.Unlike most orchids this plant can be found growing in roadside ditches. I only found it at the higher elevation roadsides, in areas over 2500 feet in altitude. Supposedly it can grow at lower altitudes but I have never seen it in the lowlands. The plants I saw were small and few flowered. It is possible that I missed most plants in the population due to the tangle of growths in the roadsides at higher elevations. The orchids were not particularly hard to see but the many types of plants growing in the roadside plus the fact that there was a white flowered weed species flowering at the time, made spotting this plant somewhat difficult. This plant was seen near Orocovis, close to the geographical center of the island. I have never seen this plant in cultivation or in exhibition anywhere in the island so I suspect that it either dies in cultivation, local growers find it too plain to spend any time and effort growing it or most likely it is not recognized as being an orchid. This orchid should be enjoyed in its habitat and not collected.

Temperature: Possibly middle eighties during the day, down into the sixties or lower at night.

Substrate: It appeared to be dense waterlogged clay soil.

Lightning: Half the day full sunlight, the rest bright shadow.

Watering: Very wet, almost daily rain, lots of fog and drizzle.

Humidity: 100% at night, probably in the nineties during the day.Blooming: In autumn and winter (Ackermann, J. D., Orchids of PR and The Virgin Islands) apparently a few plant can be found in bloom at any time in the year.

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.

Grammatophyllum speciosum

Grammatophyllum speciosum, this is a picture of the adult plant 
as it was when it produced its first inflorescence.

Grammatophyllum speciosum produces imperfect flowers near the base of the inflorescence, this may alarm those growers that are not aware of this particular trait of this genus. Flowers that are away from the base are normal.

The lip of the normal flower

This is the normal flower of Grammatophyllum speciosum

I got this plant of Grammatophyllum speciosum as a gift in June 1997. It was a two cane seedling, the largest cane was about two inches tall. It was a gift from Donato Segui. During the first few years, when it still relatively small I used to lavish care on it. But as it grew and became bigger and bigger, I started to care for it less. Eventually it ended up in the garden where it was planted in a pedestal made out of rock.

Last year a car hit the pedestal and destroyed it. The plant suffered only a slight damage but I had to drag it away from the spot where it was growing to where it s now.  Perhaps the change of place triggered flowering and it bloomed after this event.  It started flowering early in March, eleven years after I received it.

The flowers of this plant look somewhat different from the type of Gramm. speciosum that seems to be common in botanical collections. It is greener and has less maroon color. A google search located a photo of a plant almost identical to mine. It is growing in the Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.The parent of this plant was brought to Puerto Rico around the middle of the last century by a college professor, Dr. Juan A. Rivero. He apparently acquired the plant during a visit to South East Asia. 

For many years Dr. Rivero's plant was as far as I know the only one in the west of the island. In the middle nineties he selfed his plant and grew many seedlings. These seedlings were sold by a nursery in Cabo Rojo. There are several of these plants around the west of the island that still survive. Under my care this plant has been found to be fairly undemanding, and practically plague free. In my locality the climate supplies most of this plant’s growing needs as far as water, humidity and temperature.This orchid forms large clumps that can reach amazing sizes, a gigantic one that weighted about two tons was exhibited in Britain in the Crystal Palace in 1851 and was one of the centerpieces of that year’s exhibition.

Media: Bark, after the root basket formed, none.

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

Fertilizing: 20-20-20 when it was in a pot. When it was large enough to put in a wire basket I stopped giving it liquid fertilizer and started pouring two or three cups of horse manure on top of the root ball at the start of the growing season and kept replacing it as it degraded and got washed away by the rain.

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. Said to withstand temperatures down to 45F.

Care: Staking up the canes when necessary to allow the grass mower to pass. It is important to keep checking for the snails and slugs that may attack the inflorescence as soon as they get the slightest whiff of its existence. Regular grooming to remove dead canes and to keep the plant tidy go a long way toward helping this plant stay healthy.