A wonderful orchid today is this his  miniature species with the moist extraordinarily large flowers.

The plant is about 3cm high and produces masses of spikes carrying 2.5cm flowers each with an enormous (relatively) hairy lip. The flowers are produced in succession along the spikes and we have begun several months of being treated to these weird flowers.

Pleurothallis megalops is endemic to Ecuador where it is found at around 1600m in cool forests, so plants are very at home in our Cool Americas section where they grow in small baskets with great drainage but frequent watering. The flower spikes are really long (up to 15cm) and thin so they tend to become pendulous under the weight of the large flowers. The lip is reminiscent of our own native bee orchid and so perhaps the species has the same pseudo-copulation pollination strategy – keep an eye out in Ecuador for a big black hairy insect that looks like a Pleurothallis megalops lip!

Let us hope the plant is still in flower for the RHS Orchid show 25-27th March and lots of people will be able to enjoy this amazing species.

Another star species opening its flowers in time for the RHS Orchid Show – two weeks from today – at Wisley is the lovely Miltonia cuneata. This is a species we have had the joy of finding flowering in in Eastern Brazil where it grows in colonies on tall trees in wet evergreen forests at around 1100m altitude. (Species flowering in habitat below)

Our plants are just coming into flower and in the UK where they always flower in March and April. In Brazil (in the southern hemisphere) of course it flowers in October. This is the end of the dry season and an ideal time for orchids to flower as plants can expect plenty of rain and nutrient when growing seed pods.

We find the species does best in a basket as it has a fair distance between bulbs on the rhizome and so tends to ‘walk’ out of pots. We keep plants damp all year but wetter in the summer.

Flowers are large and dramatic with their large white lips and we have had spikes with up to ten flowers from strong plants. For more information on growing this species and other cool growing orchids from the Americas check out our culture article here.

As I have noted before, seeing this plant in flower always reminds me of a very pleasant lunch break under its host trees, on a trek with the students on the 2006 expedition to Brazil. Oh for a picnic in a rainforest 🙂

Lunch under Miltonia cuneata near Macae de Cima, Brazil.

Another orchid looking at its best this month is Scaphyglottis pulchella with lots of its rather ghost like flowers from the multiple leads on our plant as it grows bigger.

We grow a large number of our orchids mounted on cork bark. Scaphyglottis pulchella is ideal for mounting as it produces multiple pendulous growths with long thin pseudobulbs along a scrambling rhizome. This habit is clearly ideal if you are an epiphyte growing on a tree but inconvenient in a pot.

This rather unusual orchid is native to Costa Rica and Panama. The single flowers come from the top of mature bulbs and are long lasting. The effect is rather elegant and keeps improving as the plant matures.

The species is found in forests up to 1350m and it seems to enjoy a shaded spot in our Cool Americas section.

Costa Rica and Panama have an extraordinary diversity of orchids and we have spent spectacular times amongst this diversity in the Orchid Project’s visits to Central America.

One orchid that we really hope will form part of our display the RHS Orchid Show at Wisley at the end of March is this dramatic Central American species with gigantic moth pollinated flowers.

Epidendrum parkinsonianum is a species we are particularly fond of, since finding it in the volcanic mountains of Costa Rica, and over the past 20 years, growing this wonderful specimen in our Cool Americas Section. The large white flowers are pollinated by large Hawk Moths and the flowers are fragrant at night.

The plant has won many prizes including best Laelineae species at the European Orchid Show in Paris in 2017 (below)

In Costa Rica we found the species in the forests clothing the Poas volcano, where it grows at around 1200m altitude, hanging on the trunks and main branches of trees near rivers. The forest here is cool and wet, and the plants growth habit means that it grown in quite deep shade.

This habitat surprised us as we had previously assumed from the thick terete leaves that it needs a dry bright environment. Moving the plant into cool shady conditions in our Cool Americas section (minimum 12C) in 2007 has resulted in much better growth and heavy flowering. We keep the plant damp throughout the year.

Interestingly we have another clone which is quite different with shorter leaves and smaller flowers. We have found that this clone prefers to grow warmer in our Warm Americas section, which is also brighter. Perhaps there are distinct populations of the species in Costa Rica evolved for slightly different climates.

Look out for this plant if you are coming to the Wisley show.

We have a multitude of small yellow flowers in our Cool Americas section thanks to our Pleurothallis ruscifolia plants.

Pleurothallis ruscifolia is a medium sized plant that produces clusters of small creamy yellow flowers several times during the year.We found the species growing abundantly in cool wet forest in Costa Rica on the Poas volcano at an altitude of around 1400m. The photo below was taken in Costa Rica by one of the students on our 2005 expedition and shows how the flowers shine out when caught in a shaft of sunlight breaking through the lush canopy above.

Most of the plants we saw were growing on the trunks or lower branches of large evergreen trees and so spent much of their time in deep shade. We visited Costa Rica in July and found that on Poas it rained heavily every day. The rain usually arrived at about 12.30 and continued until about 4pm. We grow the species mounted and in pots in Cool Americas and keep it watered all year to reflect the climate it has evolved for but don’t stick rigidly to the Costa Rican timings for watering each day.