In April we split our awarded specimen of Coelogyne barbata (see details here) and the divisions have made fantastic plants after a growing season in our Cool Asia section. The large new bulbs have produced multi-flowered spikes up to 1m long like this one shown. The flowers are really spectacular and the species is very well named as the bearded Coelogyne. Our clone is a particularly large growing one – a really special orchid.

The dark brown ‘beard’ on the lip is probably an evolutionary adaption to limit access to just one species of bee to increase the chances of successful cross pollination.

The species is native to wet evergreen monsoon forest from Nepal to Southern China. We haven’t seen this species in Sikkim but we have visited the habitat (1000-1800m) where coelogynes are abundant and we replicate it in our Cool Asia section where plants are kept cool (min 10C) and really wet during the summer. We keep plants watered in winter too as the species produces its new growths as the flowers open from the old growths.

Unfortunately most of our plants from April’s division are already much too big to send in the post and so we will only be offering them once shows are a thing again. We do have a couple of smaller plants that are in spike and will have a short flower from a smaller bulb this year before taking on larger proportions next year – I hope that they haven’t sold out already (below)