Today started with Judges Breakfast and once the doors opened at 10am a stream of people kept the reception area very busy

There was lots to see – scientific information in the Atrium, orchid displays and sales

A very busy school orchid house

…and a full programme of well received lectures.

Thank to all those who worked to make the show such a success and to those who came and made it such an enjoyable day.

We open again tomorrow from 10am to 4pm.

We are having a great time sharing our orchids with visitors at the British Orchid Show and one species getting a lot of attention is Oncidium longipes.

Oncidium longipes is a Brazilian species and we saw it growing in the forests around Macae de Cima in our school visits to Brazil in 2000 and 2006. It is restricted to primary forests and grows in the mid canopy amongst other epiphytes in dappled shade and high humidity.

We find the species really prefers to be mounted where it responds by clothing the mount in growths that burst into flower in the Autumn. Flower spikes usually produce between one and three flowers but they are large for the size of the plant as seen here.

We have grown our plants from flask (they flower two years out of flask) and they show considerable variation in colour and patterning.

This morning was a busy one at Writhlington with our registrants arriving and setting up their diplays in the Post 16 building and Atrium.

By 4.30 displays were finished and we have had a very successful preview evening. Thanks to everyone who has contributed – our amazing team of volunteers, the wonderful students and all the visiting traders and growers.

We have lots of our big Coelogynes in flower for this weekend’s show.

This species is a cool growing Coelogyne from South East Asia and the Eastern Himalayas. We have seen plants growing on the Bolevan plateau in Southern Laos at around 1200m where they form large clumps in evergreen trees.

It is a very variable species in growth habit but in our collection is distinguished from the very closely related species Coelogyne fimbriata by having larger flowers with relatively smaller side lobes to the lip.

This plant forms a fantastic specimen when grown well as the plant shown here was awarded a Cultural Certificate from the Royal Horticultural Society in November 2016 at the British orchid Congress. This year the plant is even bigger and over a metre across.(see photo below)

We grow the plant flat on a large slab of cork bark and water it heavily throughout the year to grow fat pseudobulbs that flower successively for about two months. Our advice id never to let bulbs shrivel

The flowers seem to be very attractive to wasps that pollinate flowers in the greenhouse and presumably supply a last little bit of autumn sugar to the insects.

A massive thank you to my wonderful team of volunteers who make the British Orchid Show possible (volunteers filling registrants bags above). Tomorrow is set up until 4pm and then Preview Evening from 6-9pm.

Registration starts at 10am tomorrow and all registrants will collect their goodie bags (which include some nice surprises) with information, wrist bands and meal tickets.

The first plants have already arrived and tomorrow will be all action as Societies from across the UK and trade from across Europe bring thier best plants to Writhlington. Look out for more posts tomorrow.