we are having a wonderful time at the RHS Show – Thanks to our brilliant Saturday team shown here who spent the day:

Talking to the public at our display

and selling plants from the sales table

A really successful day and great to meet so many of our orchid friends in person.

Another orchid from our show display today.

Coelogyne mossiae is a species from Southern India where it is found as an epiphyte or lithophyte in subtropical forests from 2300-2700m so this is a cool growing orchid. Apparently this species is commonly miss labeled in cultivation but we are fairly confident of ours as it came from a donation from a Scottish botanic garden collection.

We find that Coelogyne mossiae is a tough orchid with thick leathery leaves and round, stout pseudobulbs. The flowers are very fragrant, long lasting and bourn on short spikes.

There is only one orchid to feature today – Best Specimen Orchid, RHS Orchid Show 2022 – Dendrobium thyrsiflorum.

This magnificent orchid is our largest  Dendrobium and is more than 2m across and this year has  22 flower spikes each with around twenty lovely cream and orange/yellow flowers.

Can any orchid species compare with the wow factor of Dendrobium thyrsiflorum? We have different clones, one grows longer bulbs with longer thinner racemes of flowers while the second is stouter growing. When flowering really well the species is breathtaking.

This majestic species is native to Eastern Himalayas and South East Asia. We have seen it on school expeditions to Laos growing in the tops of tall trees in evergreen and semi deciduous forest at around 1000m where it experiences warm wet summers and a dryer cooler winter.

To reflect the natural habitat we grow the species in Warm Asia during the summer but move it to cool Americas for the winter which encourages perfect flowering as you can see from the photos.

Our Friday show team was delighted to be awarded a full marks RHS Gold for our display at the RHS Orchid Show, along with ‘Best Specimen Orchid’ for our enormous Dendrobium thyrsiflorum.

We had a really busy day with lots of interest in our display and sales tables. I am proud of the Mendip Studio School students (Year 11 and Year 12) working a really long day, talking to thousands of people about their plants and inspiring others to get into orchids.

Our Wisley display is full of fragrant species with Bifrenaria harrisoniae, a contender for our most fragrant species.

The species, which has been a firm favourite since Victorian times, has thick waxy flowers that are long lasting if kept dry. If you are into scented plants, you just must grow this species. It is a real shame that we can’t provide scent with our photos here – you just have to come to the show this weekend.

Bifrenaria harrisoniae is native to the Mata Atlantica, Brazil, and in 2000 our expedition came across it growing on a bare granite mountain side West of Nova Friburgo.

As the photo shows, plants are growing in full sun with their roots holding firmly to the rock and very little around the plant to retain moisture. This rock was dry in the winter when we visited but would be running with water for much of the wet summer season. After seeing the plant in the wild we adjusted our growing of the species to give more light but keep cool temperatures (the altitude was around 1000m) and we grow plants in the unshaded south facing doorway of the Cool Americas section.

The habitat also sheds light on the why the species choses April both to flower and release seed. In April the climate here is still dry meaning that flowers will remain undamaged until pollinated and seed released now will be able to blow across the dry habitat. In a months time there will be heavy rains, providing water for the new growths, the maturing seed pods and the germinating seedlings.

We also have flasks of seedlings for sale at the show.