My greenhouse looks wonderful tonight – there is something very special about the tropical greenhouse in winter evenings.

A highlight of the greenhouse is Pleurothallis rowellii. This large flowered pleurothallis species is found in wet forests from Costa Rica to Ecuador where it is recorded over a wide range of elevation from warm forest at 350m to much cooler forest at 1750m.

We find the species is very happy in our Cool Americas section with other members of the genus and although the reported range suggests it would grow much warmer, we find that our plants react badly to hot weather – losing leaves and dropping flowers if the temperature in the greenhouse gets much above 30C in the summer. It suggests that our plants are from the higher growing populations of the species.

Individual flowers last several weeks and the plant produces a succession of flowers over several months so this plant will be a feature in the greenhouse well until at least Christmas. Look out for it at our virtual Orchid Festival on Dec 3rd.