We have lots of our big Coelogynes in flower for this weekend’s show.

This species is a cool growing Coelogyne from South East Asia and the Eastern Himalayas. We have seen plants growing on the Bolevan plateau in Southern Laos at around 1200m where they form large clumps in evergreen trees.

It is a very variable species in growth habit but in our collection is distinguished from the very closely related species Coelogyne fimbriata by having larger flowers with relatively smaller side lobes to the lip.

This plant forms a fantastic specimen when grown well as the plant shown here was awarded a Cultural Certificate from the Royal Horticultural Society in November 2016 at the British orchid Congress. This year the plant is even bigger and over a metre across.(see photo below)

We grow the plant flat on a large slab of cork bark and water it heavily throughout the year to grow fat pseudobulbs that flower successively for about two months. Our advice id never to let bulbs shrivel

The flowers seem to be very attractive to wasps that pollinate flowers in the greenhouse and presumably supply a last little bit of autumn sugar to the insects.