We have a rather special orchid for our 1500th orchid of the day. Bulbophyllum ambrosia has beautiful, fragrant, long lasting flowers and is straight forward to grow.

This wonderful bulbophyllum is making a fantastic display this morning with over 100 flowers and buds and is one of our most fragrant orchids with a wonderful scent of sweet warm honey.

Bilbophyllum ambrosia is a very pretty species that produces masses of single flowers on very thin stems so that they appear to float around the plant. The species is native to Southern China and Vietnam where it grows in lowland evergreen forest, and we find it does well in our Warm Asia section kept shaded, and watered, throughout the year. We have visited the habitat in Laos where there is a distinct winter cool, dry season and in cultivation the naturally cooler greenhouse temperatures from November to January do the trick and initiate the abundant flowering. A real treat on a grey February morning.

The species has a potentially straggly growth habit with a few cm between each bulb and so it is well suited to a basket of open bark mix where it can be tied back into the basket as it grows and it soon forms a ball covered in flowers.