A big thank you to our Dorset volunteers Izzy and Stephanie for searching the Purbeck cliffs near Dancing Ledge and spotting the first native British orchids flowers of 2022 – Ophrys sphegodes or The Early Spider Orchid. If you are heading that way, the Early Spiders will be in flower for about 3 weeks – […]

Welcome to Vanda weekend – all of a sudden our greenhouses are full of flowering Vanda species (lucky us). We will be taking most of them with us to the Glasgow Orchid Fair (23rd and 24th April) so that others can enjoy them too. Our first Vanda is Vanda denisoniana that flowers with us every […]

  Gongora tracyana is one of the smaller growing gongoras and a firm favourite amongst the orchid project students. Gongora tracyana is a really lovely plant with masses of small flowers on long spikes. The flowers are fragrant and seem relatively long lasting (just over a week). Sadly it came too late for the Wisley […]

An orchid collection is always full of surprises – flowers opening on plants you hadn’t even noticed were in bud – and today it is Eria amica. Eria is a wonderfully diverse genus and Eria amica comes from a group of species with stout pseudobulbs that topped with several leathery leaves and multi-flowered spikes produced […]

First flowerings of species are always exciting, and today it is the turn of Phalaenopsis bastianii. This attractive species is small growing with glossy flowers reminiscent of Phalaenopsis fasciata (below) but with a different shaped lip. Phalaenopsis bastianii is native to the Philippine islands of the Sulu Archipelago running between Borneo and the Philippines – […]