A highlight of the summer months of June, July and August, is the flowering of our Barkeria spectabilis plants. This is one species that always attracts attention from visitors and it is a regular winner of competitions we host for orchid os the year etc.

This species is found in the wild in Mexico, Guatemala and El  Salvador in dryish oak forest from 1200m to about 2000m. We grow it with a minimum temperature of 15 degrees C mounted on a cork slab in our Warm Americas section.

The natural habitat indicates it could be grown cool (down to about 12 degrees) but our plants seem to appreciate the heat. It flowers in the late spring and has a lot of flower for the size of the plant.

We have tried growing the species in pots but we the roots have always suffered from rots and the plants have struggled as a result. On cork bark mounts the roots are wonderful and last for years, so we will always grow plants mounted.

We have just split a large plant, and so in a year from now we should have lots of flowering plants available.

We fix these plants onto their bark mount in just the same way as we showed you yesterday with the tiny Bulbophyllum stormii, only the slabs of bark are much bigger.