This is a Brazilian terrestrial species and we found it growing abundantly around Macae de Cima in Rio State in regrowth forest. It seemed to prefer growing in moss protected by scrubby regrowth and made large mats of its heart shaped leaves in an area of regrowth where the forest had burnt about twenty years […]

Yesterday was a very enjoyable and productive day working with our partners at The Eden Project. Hettie (Team leader for the tropical biome) put together a great program of meetings to help plan future collaborations, and we were also joined by Andrew Barker our partner from the Dyson Foundation. We started the day with Hettie […]

This species is a real miniature with 5mm leaves along a creeping rhizome and relatively large flowers single produced in profusion. Barbosella australis is native to Southern Brazil (australis means ‘southern’ and doesn’t refer to Australia – the southern land) and we have seen related species in Brazil at around 1200m in primary forest where […]

We have another delightful Stelis species flowering this week. Stelis polyantha is a small flowered species from Ecuador where it is found in cloud forest at around 3000m. The small size of the flowers is made up for in the number of flowers per spike and the number of spikes produces that give a pinky […]

  This is a small multiflowered Masdevallia species found in cloud forests from 1000 to 3000m in Ecuador and Peru. As could be expected from its range it is a variable species but all have pretty little flowers and in our experience the species is straight forward in cultivation and multiplies relatively quickly. This variety […]