Today we have Stelis aprica – a larger growing species than yesterday’s Stelis tridentata but with smaller flowers. Other differences include the flower spikes being longer and more arching in Stelis aprica and the leaves are longer and thinner rather than short and broad in Stelis tridentata. Stelis aprica is native to the coastal cloud […]

We have several miniature Stelis species in flower this month and Stelis tridentata is a delicate and free flowering example. Stelis tridentata has 3cm oval leaves on short stems and each produces a 6cm flower spike of about 40 3mm flowers. The flowers are a diaphanous creamy gold. The species has a wide native range […]

This is the second Gongora species we have features this week and like Gongora nigropunctata (below) – which is still in flower – has long pendulous spikes of fragrant flowers. Gongora unicolor, like all Gongoras, uses perfume as a reward for pollinating Euglossine Bees. The male bees collect perfume off the slippery flowers and use it […]

Today we are greeted by the joyful prospect of our first Cattleya coccinea flower of the spring. This plant is flowering for the second time from seed sown in 2014 and this year the flower is much larger, from a larger bulb, at 6cm across. This wonderful small growing species with large flowers a classic […]

A significant proportion of our orchid species we classify as miniature orchids. ‘Miniature’ is, as Einstein would say, “relative” and so there are miniature orchids advertised that are rather large. When a teenager in the 1970s, working at Keith Andrew Orchids in Dorset, I was excited to be involved in Keith’s breeding of miniature Cymbidiums […]