Last week I described April as Coelogyne month and here is another stunning species to emphasis my point. Coelogyne velutina has a lot in common with other warm growing species with long pendulous flower stems such as Coelogyne tomentosa, Coelogyne pulverula and Coelogyne swaniana but is very distinct in the colour of the flowers […]

  This wonderful small growing Vanda is native to dryish monsoon forests in the Western Himalayas (Arunachal Pradesh), Myanmar, Thailand and Southern China from around 300 to 1200m. The habitat we have seen in Arunachal Pradesh is open forest with a distinct wet season in the monsoon summer. We grow the species high in Warm […]

This is the second flowering of seedlings grown in our school laboratory from seed collected from cultivated plants in Luang Prabang, Laos, in 2006. We found plants growing in a back street in this wonderful city (a world heritage site) and were struck by the beauty of these subtle flowers (see photo in Luang Prabang below). […]

One of our most robust and reliable Masdevallias is this species from Ecuador. The large flowers are produced on short stems and are remarkable for the purple ‘hairs’ on the lip which give the species its name meaning the burred Masdevallia. The species is found at around 1200m altitude and with us flowers several times during […]

  Many orchid species show large variation in flower colour and form as these two varieties of Cattleya intermedia flowering today in the greenhouse show. Alongside the two varieties (below) of the species that flowered for the Paris Show (day 447) they show that this species from Brazil is particularly diverse. One of the real […]