Some orchid flowers last for months while others like the flowers on this miniature asian species only last a day or two. The nice things with short lived flowers is that you are encouraged to have a really good look at them when they do flower or else they are gone. Penilabium struthio is native […]

This is another of the delightful small multi-flowered masdevallias and this one is endemic to Ecuador. It is small growing but vigorous with 4cm leaves and 15cm flower spikes with about 6-12 flowers on each. As you can see it does well for us in a small basket though we also find it does well in […]

This coelogyne produces a succession of large flowers on short pendulous flower spikes from relatively compact plants. Coelogyne speciosum is native to Malaysia, Borneo, Java and Sumatra where it is reported from 700-2000m altitude. This variety has more white on the lip than is usual and a light green flower colour where the more usual […]

Cleisostomas are small flowered relatives of Vanda with a range of growth habits but rather similar prettly little flowers that tend to open successively along relatively long flower spikes. This is the ‘bent’ cleisostoma referring to the curved terete leaves. It is a warm growing species from South East Asia, India and Malaysia where it […]

This is one of Issy’s favourite orchids – after all it seems to be named after her! Actually a lot of us count Isabellia virginalis as one of our favourite orchids. This close up shows the beautiful little flowers (thanks Ben for the photo) and then there is the interesting basket like weave of fibres […]