These warm evenings are perfect for bringing out the best in fragrant orchids and it was worth visiting the greenhouse after dark yesterday to appreciate the heady scent of this miniature orchid with enormous flowers.

The name elephantinum means gigantic angraecum but it is actually one of our smallest Angraecum species.

This plant is flowering for the forth time seven years out of flask and is just 8cm high and 8cm across. Of course it is the flower that is gigantic compared to the plant and with two flowers out today the flowers  pretty much hides the whole plant.

The species comes from the mountains of Madagascar and the plant can be grown quite cool – we are growing it here at a minimum of 10C. In common with many Madagascan angraecums it has a very long spur with nectar in the end and so is pollinated by very long tongued hawk moths. The large lip is there to guide the tongue to the opening of the spur at the top of the lip. Moth pollination also explains the night scent of the species. To me the scent of this species is a mixture of Deep Heat and almonds.

This plant was one of the BOC babies given away in vitro at our first British Orchid Congress in October 2012 – this was one of the left over small ones – but well worth growing on. We mounted it on cork straight from the flask and it grows wet and bright so sprayed daily and near the top of a cool greenhouse. We will pollinate the flowers to see if we can raise some more seedlings for the future.