Mona Island Sardinera Beach coral reef, circa 1982

Acropora palmata coral was abundant all over the Sardinera reef and  it would grow almost up to the water surface near the reef crest.

Many of the Acropora palmata colonies were composed of many thin flat branches

Every crevice in the reef was inhabited by some critter, in this area there were a lot of black urchins

There were, many, many fish around the corals.  Here you can see part of a school of surgeon fish with a few parrot fish tagging along.  These were not tiny fish most were in the 1-2 feet long range.

Here I am hanging for dear life in the strong currents of the reef crest.  You can see that the water is full of small fish.

Among Acropora palmata colonies in water about seven feet deep

Colonies of the finger coral Porites porites extended as far as the eye could see

School of fishes of all sizes filled the reef, here is a group of yellow grunts

In the Sardinera Beach reef there were fish in good numbers all over the place.

Mona Island, exploring the Acropora palmata reef, circa 1982

Acropora palmata, notice the extreme clarity of the water

Various types of coral, In the center of the photo Jorge Saliva, notice the puny arm lacking the basketball sized muscles that later appeared there

The reef crest was haunted by an unbelievable quantity of fish

There was coral all over the place

I took these few photos of the coral at the reef that borders the Sardinera beach in Mona Island.  At the time visiting this reef was for me a new and unbelievable exciting thing.  I took just a few photos because I was too busy drinking deeply from the incredible experiece of snorkeling there.   There were so many things to see and explore that it was like visiting an alien city in outer space.  The diversity of corals, fish and invertebrates made this place a dream experience for a biologist that had read all about them in the books but had not until them too much oportunity to see them in the flesh.  I have been told that the reef I visited so many years ago no longer exists, that most of the Acropora has died, that there are much less fish and algae reigns supreme.  I vividly remember marveling at a school of large parrot fish, two feet long feeding in water that was less than three feet deep.  These photos stand as a testament of the beauty that was and hopefully some day will again be.

1980 Mona Island, a happy smile in an awful spot, a memory from my AEB times

This is a photo of one of my dearest friends.  It was taken during a trip to Mona Island 1980.  I can hardly believe that thirty one years have passed since we did that trip.  Mona Island is an uninhabited island between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola.  It boasts some of the most dangerous and inhospitable terrain in the Caribbean, its central plateau is dominated by fearsomely thorny, horribly poisonous xerophytic flora.  As hard core biology students we decided to visit one of the eastern Caribbean largest breeding colony of red-footed boobies.   The colony is located in the most remote and inaccessible part of the island.  To reach it we traveled for hours through very difficult terrain and did so enduring air temperatures that in the sun reached up to 120 F.  It is a wonder nobody died.  This photo was taken near Punta del Norte, we had found a cave to take refuge from the tremendous heat and had rested for a time inside it.  The cave was filled by a several feet thick blanket of dried goat droppings.  But we were so overjoyed to be out of the sun that we didn’t mind in the least.  As we rested our tired bones on the cave floor we were thankful for a cool place to rest.  This photo reminds me of the times when life was simpler, when we were alarmingly skinny and when a cave full of dried droppings was another amazing thing to be experienced and not a horrific ordeal to be endured.  So many years have passed and we are still good friends and he is still a very nice person, always with a smile on his face.  My friend went back later to the colony and took with him his future wife.  Now he has two beautiful children and a wonderful marriage.  I suspect that if a girlfriend has the fortitude to endure the heat, the thorns and spines, the endless walking and the awful cave, there is little that can put a dent on this relationship.

One one trip to the red footed booby colony I found a an orchid in full bloom with flowers that I have never seen before.  It looked so delicate and out of place in the arid landscape.  I took a flower back with me and Hector Colon who was quite familiar with the flora of Mona Island identified it as something new for Mona Island.  Later it was identified as Broughtonia dominguensis, this was the first time this orchid had ever been found in the Puerto Rico area.  I was fascinated by the fact that this small orchid could thrive in such a hostile enviroment.  This was the start of my interest for orchids, which continues to this day.

A small pendent Dendrobium hybrid, Dendrobium Adastra x Den. parishii

Dendrobium Adastra x parishii

Dendrobium Adastra x parishii

Dendrobium Adastra x parishii

Dendrobium Adastra

Dendrobium anosmum

Dendrobium cucullatum

Dendrobium parishii

I brought this small Dendrobium hybrid at a huge Spring orchid show in 2009 that was held at Plaza Las Americas, the largest Mall in the Caribbean.  One interesting feature of these shows is that every year a few new and interesting plants are brought in, sold in quantity, and then never seen again for sale.   Because this has happened a number of times I am always on the lookout for orchids that I know are rarely exported.  This little Dendrobium is one of those rare and exciting finds.

This little plant combines the genome of three of the most outstanding species of Dendrobium of the section Dendrobium.  This orchid is the result of the cross of Den. Adastra (anosmum x cucullatum) and Den. parishii.   It is interesting to note the flower of this hybrid doesn’t resemble too closely any of the parents and has a unique charm all of its own.  One surprising characteristic of this plant is its small size.  The canes of my plant are between 12 and 15 inches long, pretty small considering than a local anosmum can easily produce five foot canes and I have some clones of cucullatum reach more than six feet long with ease.  It appears that the influence of the parishii parent has resulted in a reduced cane length in this hybrid.  But I must confess the size of this plant might have also been influenced by the way I culture it. 

One vexing problem I have had with parishii derived hybrids is their vulnerability to cane rot under my local conditions, something that also plagues my parishii plants.  However not all my parishii hybrids are equally affected, those that are in baskets with excellent drainage fare the best, those in pots fare poorly.  Because I didn’t want to lose this plant to rot I put it in a tiny basket with just enough moss to give the roots something to hold but not enough that it would stay sopping wet for hours.  As a result the root ball of this plant is comparatively puny for its size.  But since after three years under my care it has now shown itself to be quite hardy I plan to move it to a larger basket where it will be able to develop a larger root ball.  Unfortunately it has shown no inclination to produce two canes at the same time as anosmum sometimes does and its quite stingy producing keikis having produced just two so puny that I will wait until they have two canes to remove them.

As far as culture goes I grow them like I grow my anosmum except that this one is kept in a shadier location until I have more plants and can test them for resistance to several hours of full sun exposure.  Indications on growing anosmum are located elsewhere in this blog, a link can be found at the bottom of this blog page.   Compared with Adastra, anosmum and cucullatum this orchid is a relatively slow grower.  The canes sometime have slight sidewise twists, an odd feature that none of the parental species show under my care.

The flowers of this hybrid have a better shape and presentation than the flowers of any of its parents and the pink color is outstanding.  But sadly they are not scented and they are produced in limited numbers.  The relative small flower count might be due the way I grow it so the flower number will probably increase significantly if I expose it to more sun but that will be tested in the future.   Personally I would love to see a flower with the shape and color of this one but with a size comparable to the flowers of anosmum which can be four inches wide.  I sometimes wonder what would come out if someone would cross this plant with Dendrobium primulinum var. giganteum which has an enormous lip with a spectacular orange coloring in the center.  Alas it is a fantasy at this moment but, you can always dream!

Vanda merrillii Ames & Quisumb. 1932, a collector's item for those that value Vanda species

A freshly opened flower of var. inmaculata

A fully maure flower

Top view to show the degree of reflection of the petals

Variety rotorii

Variety rotorii

Vanda merrillii is native of the phillipine island of Luzon where it grows at altitudes of 1,500 feet.  This orchid has been a long time member of my orchid collection and has shown itself to be a hardy survivor of both overwatering and neglect.  My plant has grown at its best when cultivated in an area where there is high humidity and when it has been fertilized every week with a weak solution of fertilizer.  My problem has been that I usually don’t fertilize plants that are not growing and sometimes forget to fertilize this Vanda too.  That has resulted in slow growth, leaf loss and sparse flowering.  So my recommendation on this plant is to water it generously and to keep a conscientious schedule of fertilizing it.  This orchid seems to prefer a slightly shadier light regime than my other plants of this genus, I give it only a few hours of sun in the morning and light shade the rest of the day.

The flowers are produced in the spring and are long lasting. They are highly colored but unfortunately the petals twist back shortly after the flower opens giving it the appearance of a diver doing the swan dive.  Different clones differ in the amount of twisting, some only twist the petals back slightly others twist them back so much they end up almost parallel.  There are several color forms of this species that vary in the amount of red or yellow in the flower and even some that have a very dark color.  In Puerto Rico I have seen plants of the variety rotorii and some that might have been var. inmaculata but that were not labeled as such.  Plants of var. rotorii are noted by their rich red color that covers almost all the flower.  Plants of the var. inmaculata show extensive yellow areas in the basal portions of the sepals and petals with the areas of solid red color confined to the margins of the floral segments.  I think this plant will grow well in most areas of Puerto Rico, however to get a good flower show out of this Vanda you need to make sure it get the watering and fertilizing regime that it prefers.  This plant is rarely seen in local orchid collections.  I regard it like a collector’s item for those growers that appreciate the particular charms of the various Vanda species over the generally huge size and roundness of the most commonly available hybrids.

Dendrobium farmeri, a small Dendrobium that can produce an impressive show

The white form of the species, albiflorum

The most common form in the wild

A very light pastel pink form

A highly colored type with smaller slightly cupped flowers

A pink form, the orange lip is due to the fact that they were photographed with flash

Two slightly different forms side by side, note the long slits for aireation on the pots

The albiflorum form next to a pink one

A plant almost totally covered with flowers

This deeply colored form even has a purple dot in the lip

Dendrobium farmeri is an orchid that has a geographical distribution that goes from the eastern Himalayas to Malaysia.  This means that plants of this species can grow in environmental conditions that range from fairly cool to sweltering hot.  But this doesn’t mean that all plants of this species will grow under any condition that you can expose them.   There are local populations of this species that have adapted to certain regimes and will not bloom in the environmental conditions don’t match their seasonal needs.  Visitors to their natural habitat remark that the plants are often seen growing in trees near river courses.  I have had the experience of growing several different plants of Den, farmer, I will detail my experiences in the following paragraphs.

A few years ago a friend gave me as a gift a very peculiar farmeri plant.  It had a long and thin stem that about halfway of the way up the stem would fatten to a ridiculously disproportionate girth.  It was the tallest farmeri that I ever seen with canes 30cm long.  My friend gave me the plant because it would not bloom for him (he lives in the coastal lowlands of Puerto Rico), at that time the canes were about 15 cm tall.  What made them grow to 30 cm was the heavy application of water and fertilizer during its active growth phase.  After two years under my cultural regime the plant produced the two largest inflorescences that I have ever seeing in a farmeri plant.  I have wondered this plant was palpebrae but it lip didn’t show the fringe that palpebrae flowers are said to have.  This plant sadly died unexpectedly of a stem rot that had never previously attacked any farmeri plant in my collection and has never attacked one since this one died.  This plant was cultivated in a plastic basket that it eventually filled with roots, the only potting material were several large pieces of bark.  The flowers of this orchid were pure white with a bright yellow coloration in the lip.   This orchid was a large sized representative of the albiflorum variety.  All my other plants are smaller than this one and don’t show the shape of the stem this plant had.  I suspect this plant came from and mountainous region and needed a sharp drop in temperature to stimulate blooming.

I have several smaller (less that 20 cm tall) slender types will bloom equally well in the mountains as in the coasts of Puerto Rico.  In the early nineties there was a huge importation of Den. farmeri, the plants were sold at the Puerto Rico Orchid society show in San Juan.  When these plants bloomed they all turned out to be the white variant of the species Den. farmeri albiflorum.  For many years var. albiflorum was the only one that was seen in orchid exhibits in the island.  During the course of the nineties I saw exhibited some impressive specimens and I personally had a plant that would produce more than a dozen inflorescences at the same time.  Unfortunately many plants of this importation showed cupped, nodding flowers, this detracted from the beauty of the blooms.  It is not clear whether this cupping of the flowers is due to genetic or cultural causes.   

A few years ago there was another importation, this one consisted almost entirely of the pink form of the species.  I saw one plant in bloom and was so smitten with it that spent $60 dollars. That is right I spent almost five times the value of a seedling of this type of orchid in a single plant.   But I loved the purplish color of the flowers and was quite happy with my purchase.  In due time the flowers fell (the flowers of this plant last from a week to ten days, less time if weather is really hot).  In about two week the plant bloomed again and to my surprise the flowers were different!   In this blooming the flowers were pink, larger and fuller than in the firsts bloom.  A few weeks later the plant produced a single inflorescence which was again different from the previous two.   In this case the flowers had a very delicate pastel pink color.   After careful examination of the plant I had to conclude that I actually had three plants growing very close together in a single pot.

With extreme care I disentangled the three different clones and potted them separately.  Two of them have been growing well with no problems, the third one almost died.  Why?  Because under my conditions farmeri seems to be extremely vulnerable to rot after it has been repotted.  The plants can live for a long time, a decade or more filling and growing over their old pot in great health.  But every time I have divided and repotted the plants I have lost many of the pieces.

My saddest experience was when I took out of its pot a specimen plant of the variety albiflorum that had been in the same basket of about ten years.  I took the plant out of the basket divided it in several pieces and potted each piece separately.  After a few days they started dying, at the end only a tiny two cane piece survived.  This piece has been growing painfully slowly but at least is alive and has started producing small but pleasing inflorescences.  So what is my advice on potting this plant?  Put it into a basket that will allow the plant to grow for years without the need to repot.  Use the hardest most decay resistant media you can find, don’t use cheap bark and for Peter’s sake don’t even consider the super cheap landscaping bark for this orchid. 

The most vexing problem I have had to deal with this species is the proclivity of some clones to produce new canes lower in the stem than the original cane.  As a result of this habit the new canes end up growing through the media and sometimes into the media before growing upwards.  These types may be better grown in slat baskets or mounted on tree fern slabs.

For most of the year I don’t fertilize this orchid, I only fertilize when the plant is producing new growths.  When this plant is growing the canes grow comparatively fast so you need to give it fertilizer frequently.  When my plants I growing I give them diluted fertilizer at every watering.  I use whatever fertilizer I have on had, be it 20-20-20 or any other combination, I have never seen any difference in growth as long as I fertilize the plant regularly.

My plants bloom in February, March and April.  The albiflorum type produces a single flush of inflorescences that open all at the same time.  The pink flowered types bloom once a year when they have few canes, but once they grow large they bloom twice, once in February and again in March or April.  My main problem has been that the flowers are wildly attractive to thrips which will attack them in great numbers even when they have been rendered toxic by the application of pesticides.  To avoid having the flowers damaged with these hateful pesky pests I move the plants indoor for the duration of the blooming period.  As the plants mature and gain size they can produce very impressive flowerings.

These plants need bright light to bloom well.  I grow my plants in a terrace where they get full morning sun for two to three hours and then sunlight filtered through the trees the rest of the day.  Too much shade results in poor blooming or even no blooming at all.

When my plants are growing I water them almost daily to sustain the rapid growth of the canes.  During the summer my plants get a daily soaking from the thunderstorms that form over the mountains every day.  The plants take the wetness with little complaint.  When the dry season starts in December I stop watering the plants and allow them to dry, but not so much the canes shrivel and twist, if the canes start to get too wrinkled I water the plant lightly.

This plant is an excellent addition for an orchid collection if you can fulfill its relatively modest needs.