This little dendrobium goes unnoticed for much of the year with its thin terete leaves and stems, but then demands attention with these lovely non-resupinate (upside down) flowers. The plant flowered in the summer and has a fresh flush of flowers now for the autumn.

Dendrobium striolatum is endemic to Australia where it is found growing on cliffs and boulders in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, in exposed conditions. It copes with these exposed conditions with short (15cm) terete leaves and a slow growth habit.

The whole plant is pendulous and so we grow the species mounted on cork and avoid disturbance to its leisurely progress.

A real treat every autumn is this appropriately named Cymbidium (it is very elegant).

Cymbidium elegans is native to the Himalayas where we have seen it growing abundantly in forests above Gangtok (capital of Sikkim) as well as in North Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Unfortunately we have always visited the Himalayas in the spring (great for Coelogynes) and so have not seen the plants flowering in situ but when not in flower can be identified by the large number of seed pods left from the many crowded flowers on the spike.

The species always reminds me of our wonderful times in Sikkim with students from Takse School, Gangtok, and going out into the forests of Fambong Lho (photo below) to identify orchids where this species was very abundant. It grows in cool wet evergreen forest and is usually high in trees.

We find that the species grows well in pots or baskets.

This wonderful flower belongs to Dracula bella. The first large heavily patterned flower has just opened with more buds to come.

We have a number of Dracula species in the school collection but this is the plant with the largest and most dramatic flowers. The species is native to dense cloud forests in Colombia and Ecuador at altitudes from 1700-2000m. We have seen other draculas growing in Costa Rica where we found plants restricted to wet mossy positions in low light. In common with most draculas, Dracula bella has strongly pendulous flower spikes and so basket culture is important, both to display plants, and to stop flowers becoming trapped in pots.

As you can see this plant suffered from heat stress early in the summer and will drop two leaves soon although there are new ones emerging in the cool of the autumn. We hung the plant in too bright a position and quickly moved it back to a shady spot under another orchid basket where it is easy to keep the plant wet, shaded and cool. When mature the species makes fantastic specimens – see our plant before division below.

The flower is a deceit pollinator and mimics a fungus with its strange lip to attract fungus gnats.

At Writhlington we grow 900 different orchid species and a small number of interesting primary hybrids. Coelogyne x intermedia (above)  is a natural hybrid between two of our favourite Coelogynes; Coelogyne cristata and Coelogyne flaccida (below).

We have seen both species growing close together in Sikkim during our five school expeditions to this wonderful part of the Himalayas.
Coelogyne x intermedia has inherited the best of both species with gracefull arching flower spikes (from Coelogyne flaccida) and large crystaline white flowers (frome Coelogyne cristata). The bulbs are more like Coelogyne flaccida while the leaves are the verdant dark green of Coelogyne cristata.
The two species and their hybrid all flower in March and April, from the previous years’ bulbs, and it makes for a real talking point in the greenhouse to see the two parents and offspring in flower together. Coelogyne x intermedia exhibits hybrid vigour and is easy to grow and floriferous. It enjoys the same cool and wet conditions as the parent species seen flowering here near Tinkitam in Sikkim

Another of our regular autumn orchids is this large flowered coelogyne with a magnificent hairy lip adapted for pollination by large bees.

Coelogyne speciosum is native to Malaysia, Borneo, Java and Sumatra where it is reported from 700-2000m altitude. This variety (albicans) has more white on the lip and a light green flower colour than the more usual variety with yellow and brown.

We grow the species in Warm Asia (min 18C) although its range indicates that it could be grown cooler. Each short flower stem produces two or three  flowers that bloom successively over several months and on a large plant can give a very impressive display

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We keep the species well watered throughout the year. It produces the odd flower at anytime through the year but the main flowering is now.

During last year’s visits to Borneo we saw a number of warm growing Coelogyne species similar to Coelogyne speciosa in large trees such as in the photo below.

The plants are growing in shade on the lower branches of trees close to a limestone cliff and the forest is wet and hot throughout the year.