Yesterday I mentioned that this little beauty won 2nd Pleurothallis here at the Malvern Show.

Pleurothallis sarracenia is a small growing species from the Mata Atlantica, Brazil with 1cm long leaves that hug the bark it grows on, and unusual dark purple flowers with just a tiny opening for the pollinating ant to enter the flower.

The species enjoys conditions in our Cool Americas section providing it grows high up and so keeps a little dryer than some of our Pleurothallis species.

We haven’t yet identified what the ants find attractive about the flower and have never seen a British ant visiting flowers so perhaps the reward is specific to the local Brazilian ants.

Lots of p[eople have been asking for plant details on our display so here are the award winners

1st Laeliniae – Cattleya purpurata ‘venosa’

1st Dendrobium – Dendrobium victoria regina

1st Phalaenopsis – Phalaenopsis cornu-cervi and 2nd Phalaenopsis – Phalaenopsis equestris

1st Pleurothallis – Scaphosepalum verrucosum, 2nd Pleurothallis – Pleurothallis sarracenia, Merit – Pleurothallis fulgens

2nd Vandae – Vanda falcata

All awards in ‘Trade Class’

Students were very impressed with the Best Amateur Display – Bournemouth – it even has a real boat, lobster pots and shells

Pupils are celebrating winning ‘Best Trade Display’ at this year’s Malvern International Orchid Show.

Congratulations to the ex-students who put together the wonderful display and all the students, staff and volunteers responsible for growing the plants.

Todays show team from Years 7, 9 and 12 have done a wonderful job presenting our orchids to the public and selling from the sales table.

The Malvern International Orchid Show continues tomorrow, with displays by Orchid Societies from across the UK and trade from across the world. We would love to see more of our orchid friends at the event – come up and say hello.

We are on our way to the malvern show in the school mini bus (more photos later) but had time to water the greenhouse and find the dramatic flowers of Dracula bella to greet us.

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.

When mature the species makes fantastic specimens (below) but needs to be grown cool and wet to avoid heat stress in the summer.

We have three yellow flowered Oncidiums on our display this weekend and the largest growing is Oncidium spaculatum.

Oncidium sphaculatum is a majestic and impressive species with dense branched spikes 2m long each carrying over 100 yellow and brown flowers. This plant has five spikes and so with more than 500 flowers is a sight to behold.

We first found the species in the wild in lowland Guatemala in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala – the largest tract of rainforests north of the Amazon. Oncidium spaculatum was common on large trees and palms around Laguna Yaxha. A particlarly fond memory is finding an old fruiting palm that contained several Oncidium spaculatum plants and their long flower spikes as well as a Toucan feeding on the palm fruits.

Oncidium spaculatum is found in dryish lowland forest from Mexico through Central America to Venezuela where it experiences a hot wet season and a long dryer season. We find it appreciates lots of water and feed in the summer when in growth and a much dryer winter with enough water to stop the bulbs shrivelling. We grow plants in warm, Americas (min 15C) although plants would appreciate higher temperatures. When we were staying amongst plants in Guatemala the night time temperatures were around 25C.