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This Cattleya species is a highly variable one from Brazil. The plant photographed here is one of the coerulea varieties (meaning blue – or in this case a bit blue) and is a semi-alba in that the petals and sepals apart from the lip are pure white.

The more common forms have pink petals and purple on the lip although the shape is also very variable and we have the ‘orlata’ variety in flower too (see below)

Thje species is bifoliate (two leaves on each pseudobulb) and comes from the Mata Atlantica (coastal Eastern Brazil) where it grows in forest up to about 1000m and so is warm to intermediate growing and seems to love our Warm Americas Section (Minimum 15C)

A final photo of our London Display now all the plants are safe back in the school greenhouse and a big thank you to the fantastic team of students and parents that worked so hard on Wednesday. The next show we are attending is the Devon Show in Budleigh Salterton on 13th May. Our next show at school is July 1st.

Coelogyne cristata is a fantastic species from the Himalayas with large white flowers. As the photos from our London display show the lip colour varies from dark orange, through yellow, light yellow and of course pure white. The plants are also variable in leaf colour, distance between bulbs, size of flowers and texture of flowers – all good reasons to grow lots of Coelogyne cristatas.

 Coelogyne cristata flowering near Tinkitam, Sikkim

We have seen this species in the wild in Sikkim and Darjeeling, India. It grows on trees and rocks at an altitude of around 2000m above sea level. It always grows with thick moss indicating a love for damp conditions. We keep our plants wet in the summer and quite damp in the winter. Its altitude gives cool winters with a minimum around 6-10 0C and so we grow the species both in our Cool Asia section (minimum 10C) and our Warm Temperate section (minimum 6C)

The flowers can easily be damaged by water and so we avoid spraying them with the hose and greatly reduce watering when the flowers are out.

We have observed considerable variation in lip colour and flower shape in wild populations reflecting the variety of forms we have on our display.

Here is our plant of Epidendrum parkinsonianum ‘Jess’ that received a cultural commendation at the London Show. As you can see it has magnificent long dark green semi-terete leaves and large white and green moth pollinated flowers.

We found this species in the volcanic mountains of Costa Rica where it grows at around 1200m altitude hanging on the trunks and main branches of trees near rivers. This habitat surprised us as we had assumed from the thick 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.