Today we dusted down our rather naff Christmas trees and started to plan Orchid Christmas 2017. For anyone who has not been before, Orchid Christmas is an evening of orchids, mince pies, mulled wine and Christmas music and one of our favourite evenings of the year. This year Orchid Christmas will be on December 13th from […]

365 days has featured many of our miniature pleurothallis species. This one, with a great name, is native to the Mata Atlantica cloud forests of Brazil. It has relatively large flowers for compared to similar species such as Pleurothallis grobyi (day 72). We find this and simiar species do well mounted, potted or in small […]

We have had some visitors from The Netherlands this week. Here are Eva and Liza with Masdevallia picea. This Masdevallia species has a rather unpleasant smell likened to vomit. Of course at school species with unpleasent smalls are rather popular and great for introducing to visitors. The plant’s common name is the pitch black Masdevallia which […]

We have seen this Autumn flowering pleione species growing around Gangtok in Sikkim at 1500m which makes it much warmer growing than many of the Chinese spring flowering species. It has a wide range across the Himalayas, Southern China and South East Asia where it is found as an epiphyte in mossy monsoon forests from […]

This species is native to Ecuador and forms a large growing plant with long spikes of 8cm wide flowers. Odontoglossums have now been included in Oncidium but as a genus Odontoglossum is useful as the species that were included share cultural requirements – cool, damp shade similar to their cloud forest homes – that differs […]