Cattleya jenmanii rubra

Acacallis cyanea Lindley 1853

A plant product of a sibling cross.  I saw iit in the collection of a friend who says it grows well for him and blooms frequently.  He grows it in a warm, humid environment.

Bulbophyllum romyi B.Thoms 2015

I saw this plant this orchid yesterday.   I was told a shipment that arrived on the island labeled as Bulb fascinator, turned out to be all Bulbophyllum romyi.  This is one case where I am sure nobody is complaining.  The color of this orchid makes it very hard to get a good photo.  I had to use the phone camera to capture the incredibly dark lip.  When I took photos with my DSRL camera, the flower comes out red, beautiful, but highly unrealistic.  The plant I saw is still young, I was told that when it gets bigger the flower will be even more impressive.

Coelogyne rochussenii de Vriese 1854. Beautiful and with a powerful fragrance

I brought this plant about five years ago.   Initially it didn’t do well.  For reasons that I could not decipher the new growths kept dying from rot.  This is a very unusual thing to happen to a Coelogyne in my garden.   None of the other Coelogynes I grow, Burfordiense, mayeriana, parishii and an unknown one similar to schielleriana, has ever lost a new growth from black rot.   After the plant had initiated, and lost several new growths I decided that it was just not doing well in my growing area in the mountains of Puerto Rico.  I took the plant to my other growing area, which is in the lowlands near the northwest coast of the island.  It is warmer and drier that the other location.  Since the plant didn’t have that many roots and no new growths, I put it over a pond, where it would be in a humid environment but without the constant wetness of the other area in the mountains.

The plant slowly began producing new growths and thankfully they didn’t rot.  I was not paying too much attention to it since I worried that I might have been killing it with kindness.  The plant spent years over the pond, including staying there during two hurricanes, which didn’t have the slightest effect on it.

Last week as I was walking in the garden, I noticed that it had some green growths, I initially thought they were young pseudobulbs, but on closer inspection I found out they were inflorescences.  I was delighted.  The plant produced an inflorescence las year, but it was short and not impressive.

I took the plant with me to the mountains so I could enjoy the flowers.  The flowers opened today, the 22 of October.   Initially the fragrance was slight.  But by 10 am the fragrance was powerful, in fact so much so that it was cloying.   It is a nice fragrance, but as I stood close to the two inflorescences, it was so strong I could almost taste it.   In the afternoon, the flowers started to close and the fragrance abated considerably, by night fall I could detect no smell.  Many of the photos I have seen in the internet show flowers that are partly closed.

I plan to grow this orchid into a specimen plant.  It grows well with little special care.  My suspicion is that I was watering it too much.   It seems to like environmental humidity but not being wet all the time.  I plan to use a flat plate to grow it to allow it to ramble at will, the conical pseudobulbs are separated by stolon that is a few inches long.  This means that this orchid will escape from a typical pot in one or two years at most.

Cattleya nobilior Rchb.f 1883, grown near the town of Lares, Puerto Rico

The interior of the island of Puerto Rico is mountainous and because of this the temperatures are cooler than in the coast and environmental humidity is higher.  This produces favorable climatic conditions for the successful culture of many types of orchids.  This plant was grown near the town of Lares.

Sarcoglottis sceptrodes (Rchb. f.) Schltr. 1920,

Photographed in 2019 at the 70 annual Puerto Rico orchid society show in the Jardin Botanico de Rio Piedras.

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

Dendrobium purpureum Roxb. 1820

Epidendrum lacerum Lindley 1838, in the 2019, PR orchid society show.

Scuticaria salesiana Dressler 1968

Photographed at the March 2019 Puerto Rico orchid society show.

Cadetia taylori [F. Mueller]Schlechter 1912, considered a Dendrobium

This plant was photographed in March 2019, at the 70 annual show of the Puerto Rico orchid society.

Dendrophylax funalis [Sw.]Fawcett 1889, in the 70 Puerto Rico orchid society show in March 2019

It is rare to see leafless orchids displayed at local orchid shows.  This was a rare treat.  This plant needs high humidity environmental, as well as conscientious care to do well.   

Coryanthes macrantha [Hooker]Hooker 1831, an orchid with an amazingly complex structure.

The flowers of Coryanthes are some of the most complex and fascinating in the world.  The flowers have an inner pool, scent secreting surfaces and glands that secrete liquid to fill the pool.  A full description of the flowers is beyond the scope of this post but I recommend highly reading about the natural history of these amazing orchids.

Sacoila lanceolata (Aubl.) Garay 1982, for many year this plant eluded me, I found it at a roadside. I expected the flowers to be red, but the flowers I found were orange

Sacoila lanceolata is a terrestrial orchid that is widespread in the Antilles and tropical America.  In the photos I have seen of the species, the flowers are bright red.  But the population I saw in the west of the island of Puerto Rico, is pale orange.  Apparently there are also yellow ones, but I have not seen them only heard about them.

Spiranthes torta (Thunb.)Garay & H.R.Sweet, I photographed this little plant in a grassy area in the town of Lares, Puerto Rico

I saw this plant in a grassy area in the town of Moca.  The plants are small and easily missed among the grass.  I had to get into my belly to be able to take a close up of the flowers.   It is native of Puerto Rico and many other places.

Dendrobium anosmum var. huttoni

In the difficult weeks and months after the hurricane, I lost hundreds of plants to the changed conditions of illumination, humidity and rainfall.  This is one of the survivors of hurricane Maria.  Last year it was in poor shape and it didn't bloom.  The 2018 canes were small for the plant but they were large enough to produce four flowers.  I expect that as it recuperates from the damage it suffered after the hurricane it will go back to blooming well.  It is highly fragrant and even with only four flowers it perfumes the area around it.

Dendrobium harveyanum Rchb.f. 1883, blooming late in the year, months out of its normal blooming date.

Hurricane Maria caused grievous damage to the forest where I live.  Many trees fell and the canopy was destroyed in most of the forest.  Humidity and rainfall dropped.  Because there was no canopy the area temperature went up.  Also without the canopy the full power of the tropical sun hit all the understory plants burning them severely and killing some.  I lost many of my orchids to the changed environmental circumstances.  But some survived through it all.  Among them Dendrobium harveyanum.  In the last month it has not rained and the plants are suffering.  I wonder if this period of low humidity triggered this out of season blooming of the harveyanum.

Dendrobium sutiknoi P.O'Byrne 2005

I photographed this plant at the 2018 Puerto Rico orchid society orchid show.  This Dendrobium is a big plant.  The flowers are impressively large for an antilope Dendrobium,

Coelogyne pulverula Teijsm. & Binn. 1862, a specimen plant

This orchid was seen the 2018 Puerto Rico Orchid society show.  It is a large and healthy plant with long inflorescences and beautifully colored flowers.  It is labeled Coelogyne dayana "pipping rock".   Coelogyne dayana is a synonym of Coelogyne pulverula.

Oncidium altissimum [Jacq.] Swartz 1800, a close up of a flower from a plant growing in the Rio Abajo forest, Puerto Rico.

This orchid was one of the commonest epiphytic orchid in the Rio Abajo forest, Arecibo, Puerto Rico.  However it is unclear how many plants survived hurricane Maria.  Most plants grew high up the trees in branches that were close to the canopy, where they could get dappled sunlight.   After the hurricane, the plants that remained on the trees were severely sunburned because without the canopy to filter the sun, they were exposed all day to the harsh strength of the the tropical sun.  Unfortunately so many trees were broken, brought down or grievously damaged that checking on how the plants in the forest are doing right now would be a difficult and dangerous thing to do.  Hopefully in the future I will be able to check on how the plants that I had observed fared after the hurricane.