We have lots of amazing orchid species in flower at the moment and so our team of orchid growers are busy pollinating flowers to set seed capsules. Pollination is an exciting moment when every student starts to look forward to a greenhouse full of newly flowering seedlings of their favourite species.

On average it takes ten months for a seed capsule to ripen and then it’s time for seed sowing our propagation laboratory. After another eighteen months the first seedlings will be ready to deflask and with luck these first seedlings will flower in just three years though with larger growing species it may take five or six years.

Fortunately we are patient people in the Orchid Project and of course each year sees new batches of seedlings coming up to flowering size. This is a good month for Heather as she is having the fun of pollinating some of her top plants like Barkeria skinneri and watching the first flowers open on a batch of Cattleya coccinea seedlings she has been looking after for two years.

If you would like to see how we pollinate our plants then why not come along to Orchid Christmas on 15th December which will include a special pre-christmas holiday pollination workshop.