Earlier in the month we had the coerulea (blue) variety of this Central American species and today we have the more usual pink form flowering.

This species was known as Cattleya bowringiana until renamed by the great US botanist Bob Dressler.  I had the honour of exploring Costa Rican Forests with Bob in 2003 and learnt an enormous amount about Central American orchids.

Guarianthe bowringiana is native to Guatemala and Belize in Central America. It is usually found in dryish lowland forest and was seen by students on our trip to Guatemala near Yaxha at 300m altitude (see photo below). Plants come into flower during autumn and winter and produce long spikes with many flowers from the robust pseudobulbs.

Autumn is here and our autumn flowering Himalayan Cymbidiums are coming into flower. The first is Cymbidium erythraeum and this is a smaller growing clone which we have grown from seed at Writhlington.

This Cymbidium is one of the many found in the Sikkim Himalaya and students on our school expeditions to Sikkim have seen this graceful species growing in large evergreen trees  at around 2000m altitude around Gangtok and in Southern Sikkim near Tinkitam.

Cymbidium erythraeum is a lovely orchid when not in flower due to its long thin dark green leaves. The flower spikes emerge in the autumn and the long lasting flowers are a treat throughout the winter. The spikes are generally arching or pendulous and this plant has one of each. We also have a taller growing, and later flowering, clone with much longer and more upright spikes but very similar flowers.

We grow this plant with other cymbidiums in a winter minimum of 6C and vents that open at 12C so it grows really cool. We keep it very wet in summer with plant food in most waterings. In the winter we keep it damp and never let it completely dry out. The evergreen forests we have seen the species in have large amounts of moss and abundant epiphytes indicating a very wet climate.

Don’t miss our display of fantastic Cymbidium species in the greenhouses during the British Orchid Show.

We are really pleased to anounce that the Scottish Orchid Society will be amongst our exhibitors at the British Orchid Show. Travelling from north of the border with vehicles full of plants shows real commitment.

A massive thank you in advance to the growers from societies across the UK, and trade from across Europe for making the British Orchid Show  2018 truly spectacular – we couldn’t do it without you.

Day tickets for the British Orchid Show will be available on the door this coming Saturday and Sunday for what will be an amazing orchid event.

If however you want to be part of the whole weekend you should  register here for the following access:

• Entry to every day of the Orchid Show and Congress 2-4th November
• Entry to the Preview Evening 6-9pm on Friday 2nd November
• Entry to science symposium lectures on Saturday 3rd November
• Entry to the Hardy Orchid Day Lectures on Sunday 4th November
• Access to the registrants lounge with free wifi and refreshments
• Your registrants bag with information and goodies.
• Access to everything else that makes the Orchid Show and congress special – Great refreshments, Tours of the glasshouses, displays and activities

Registration has been held at £35 single and £50 Joint

We are now looking around the greenhouse to spot the plants that will be the stars of the greenhouse visitors to the British Orchid Show this week. Perhaps our most dramatic plant of the moment is our monster Coelogyne Barbata with twenty spikes opening this week.

Barbata means ‘bearded’ and the bearded coelogyne is a truly spectacular thing. This plant has been growing in Cool Asia since 1998 and is rapidly becoming a specimen plant. This year there are eleven spikes each with about ten large flowers. The dark brown ‘beard’ on the lip is probably an evolutionary adaption to limit access to just one species of bee to increase the chances of successful cross pollination.

The plant grows in a large basket and is kept wet in the summer and damp in the winter to reflect the habitat which is wet evergreen monsoon forest from Nepal to Southern China. We haven’t seen this species in Sikkim but we have visited the habitat (1000-1800m) where coelogynes are abundant.

We have lots of seedlings from this plant growing well in the lab and these are the result of a cross made at the last British orchid Congress on Norwich. A congress is a great chance to set seed from the wonderful plants that come together from all of the UKs top growers. We are expecting the orchid hall to be truly spectacular.