This wonderful dendrobium has the brightest golden flowers with a large orange blotch on the lip.

The golden flowers of the species always transport me to the remarkable forsts of the Bolaven Plateau in Southern Laos.

Dendrobium chrysotoxum is native to seasonally dry forest monsoon forests in South East Asia and we found it in several locations at around 1000m, on the Bolaven Plateau, around Paksong in Southern Laos. Plants were mostly growing on the trunk and lower branches of large trees in good light as shown on the photo below.

In cultivation we replicate the natural habitat by growing plants warm and wet in the summer in Warm Asia but give a cooler and much dryer winter in the top of Cool Americas. We find that baskets are ideal for this rewarding species that gives an immense amount of flower for the size of the plant. We have a number of plants and we will have flowers well into May.

This is a species from dendrobium, section densiflorum, which contains 14 species, characterised by flowers in a miltiflowered inflorescence produced near the top of stout pseudobulbs. The pseudobulbs have a few leathery leaves near the top. All 14 species are stunning and we have had five of them flowering already this Spring (reminders below)

(D. jenkinsii, D. lindleyi, D. farmeri and D. thyrsiflorum)