We have reached the milestone of day 300 – yes 300 days featuring 300 different orchid species in flower on the day in the glasshouses of the Writhlington Orchid Project. The really exciting thing for us at school is the knowledge that we still have some of our favourite orchids still to bloom in November and December and these promise to be exciting months.

To celebrate day 300 we have one of our most floriferous coelogynes. Coelogyne rochusennii is a quite a small plant but it produces the most extraordinarily long flower spikes. The two spikes on this plant have 40 flowers and are over 80cm long – wow!

The species is native to humid lowland forests from Malaysia to the Philippines and we find it prefers to grow warm and wet in our Warm Asia section. We only grow the species in baskets to accommodate the sharply pendulous flower spikes but work hard to keep plants well watered throughout the year. This is made easier by hanging the baskets below other orchids in baskets that prefer high light and dryer conditions higher in the greenhouse.

By the way the flowers are fragrant and remind us of citrus.