The ‘little mouths’ of our Pleurothallis paliolatas are once again greeting us in our Cool Americas section – perhaps they want to sing carols now that we are preparing for orchid Christmas on Dec 10th.

This free flowering species arrived in our collection as an unexpected ‘weed’ on a different plant, and since the species propagates freely by keikis, 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 straightforward to grow, so a good species to try if you are new to Pleurothallis.