An interesting display for our BBC visitor yesterday visiting our Cool Americas section was the ‘gaping mouths’ of hundreds of Pleurothallis palliolata flowers. The flowers are produced successively from the base of the heart shaped leaves and they will be looking at us until well past Christmas.

We are delighted with this free flowering species especially as it arrived as an unexpected ‘weed’ on a different plant. The species propagates freely by keikis on top of the older leaves and we regularly have plants for sale at our online shop.

Pleurothallis palliolata is native to cool mountain forests in Costa Rica and Panama. We have seen closely related species growing in wet evergreen forest at 1400m on the Poas volcano in deep shade. We grow the species successfully both mounted and in pots and it has proved robust and straight forward to grow, so a good species to try if you are new to Pleurothallis.