SOME ORCHID BUDS & FLOWERS

It is true to say I have been a little ... preoccupied with regards a subject that my most popular blog covers.

This has held back my other blogs somewhat, along with the highly variable weather, especially my British wildlife blog.

This s because something has occurred several months earlier than ... well, than I expected it to in all honesty by about 6 months. This is a very big thing and though I do mention this on the blog in question I do not go into detail. Just trust me it is big and over the next couple of months it will change everything. For the better.

I have to be even more preoccupied than ever before with this said subject and for at least a month ... maybe three or four. It is simply impossible to say. Despite the in depth knowledge I have within this particular blog's posts and it may seem like I can predict, work out and appear to know everything ... well, I do not. Some things I literally have to take a stab at and hope I am in the ballpark. From time to time I am not.

Sometimes these stabs are completely obvious by which then I will state so.

But before I get preoccupied with this other ... matter I decided that recent activity with my Orchids should be posted up before things go a bit ... well, nuts.

I have several Orchids in flower and an even greater number with buds and I only hope that I manage to catch those in flower in the coming weeks in picture and film and post on the Internet.

I have several Moth Orchids, Phalaenopsis, in flower and a few in bud.

I have also now, this morning, noticed that my Dendrobium victoriae-reginae has a few buds on it and I dare say more will appear over the next couple of weeks?

My Vanda coerulea is in bud, or the very early stages, and I fear this one might be missed, though it is several weeks from producing flowers.

Here are a few pictures and videos of them ...

Dendrobium victoriae-reginae ..

Ahh yes ... new LED bulbs I spotted in Sainsury's Homebase for stupidly cheap money and very high wattage. Well high for an LED. AT £6 each I decided to get TWO! They are 20W each so now are hooked up alongside my 16W and 19W Toshiba E-Core bulbs. It is VERY bright now, lol. 

Annoyingly I have been trying to add new E-Cores for two years but the prices have increased markedly and I have been pushed for time too.

THE ODONTOGLOSSUM FLASKS

Right then?

I think I may have forgotten to post some videos up on here?

It is not January 11th 2015, which oddly enough is my late grandmothers birthday who would have loved my getting into Orchids. I plan to do much more with Orchids this year than I did last year.

Already and just before Christmas while admittedly not planned I ended up in McBean's Nursery outside Lewes in Sussex. While their I ended up being bought a small species of Slipper Orchid, by a brother, and I grabbed to Odontoglossums in flasks. Well...urine specimen bottles to be precise.

Now the odd thing is before I decided I wanted the tiny flasks, as sthis was something I wanted to but and become involved with working with within a couple of years, I wanted to know what they would like like. Often flasks are hybrids between two parents witht he intention of finding something pretty ... well pretty, exceptionally beautiful.

Think of it is many Holy Grails within the world of Orchids. Produce something truly spectacular and you get dibs on all the early ones and you get to name it after your nursey and you get notoriety. In theory.

Often when you purchase flasks you are buying into this gamble...sort of.

Now with these flasks something went awry because I chatted with the friendly and helpful chap there and I had spotted these really fantastic lemon coloured Odontoglossums and he siad they should look like those, I immediately grabbed both flasks.

Only two days later when I was looking at their names to try and find pictures on the Internet of the parents I noticed something. The family, or genus, name for the Orchids was labelled as 'Oncid.' and not 'Odont.'?!

I had made an error...a bad one. Now there are a lot of Oncidiums I like but are mostly botanical ones but the ones normally seen in most nurseries are the ones often called names like 'Dancing Ladies' or 'Sweet Sugar' and have great shaped flowers, albeit very small but with a hugely oversized lip at the bottomg that is four times the size of the rest of the flower. These are always brilliant yellow. Now the flowers themselves are a great shape and the colour of mostly vivid canary yellow but with a few reddish brown striped on the tiny petals and sepals and the uniform yerllow giant lip. But it is the lip that lets them down for me.

Yes I do actually own an Oncidium of this type, it is true. But it was more out of pity for the state of the plant than it was tham being on my wanted list. Which they are not. So it was now bloody weird that I now had three of the damn things!! Lol.

Only I didn't have three of them.

AFtewr searching the Internet I failed tp ick up on the fact that a great deal of Odontoglossum like flowers kept coming up in the search. This happaned about half a dozen times before I started clicking on them to take a greater look and eventually I found that there had been a change in taxonomy? And another bad one it seems and I realised these really bad name and taxonimic changes are not restricted to herpetology, ichthyology and batrachology.

So I am back to having two Odontoglossums and just like Morelia viridis and many others will still be Chondropython viridis to me and thousands of others, so these will always be Odontoglossums because some scientists, or maybe many scientists, seem to miss the obvious POINT?!

Anyhoo recently it came around to the time when the Odontoglossums needed to be removed from their flasks and repotted. The agar solution was shrinking and the confines of the flasks were now proving to be exactly that, confines.

SO I managed to acquire a bag of Levington's Orchid compost from a nursery 500 yards from me that I buy my Orchid food from but for some reason forgot about them when I went to B&Q looking fdor the sdame compost that was the only one out of stock?!

Yeah B&Q because it makes sense not to order in the only compost anyone would use in the winter months?! My bloody God!

Anyway I filmed myself removing them from the flasks and then potting them up, so tp speak...

ORCHIDS IN MY WINDOW

Ah now this is end of March like the other video I just uploaded.

Now this was a weird one whereby I have a mirror image on both sides made up of one Dendbrobium kingianum type, one Dendrobium nobile type and one Zygopetalum. Every year the two Dendrobium types flower around January February and all at the same time on each side.

Yet you can see clearly in the video that this year the left side flowered first while the right side flowered much later and one even failed altogether?!

I then realise that we had precious little sunlight and we had a couple of afternoons of sunlight and no mornings. This window is south facing and so an afternoon sund would hit the left side whereas a morning sun woulf hiut the right side.

This kind of threw me somewhat as they all get watered the same and fed the same so I was like 'wft?!' Lol!

My cream Dendrobium kingianum (labelled as such when I purchased it is in full flower here but I expected more flowers than this. Despite the fact there must be a hundred! Lol!

When I pan left to the Dendrobium Berry Oda (as labelled but obviously a hybrid kingianum) has but a few flowers left.

Oh and you can se that I have moved the Angry Wasp Orchid from upstairs in my bedroom to here?

My Cymbidiums have all ben placed in the garden now!

COLMANARA WILDCAT ORCHID

Hmm finally I get to post a few things on here?!

Have a few I am waiting for too. But right now I have my Colmanara Wildcat, or the closest I could get in identificiation not that it matters, with three spikes!!

Gorgeous in your face flowers what are not gawdy in anyway. Looking like Wasps and likely from an Orchid that intends to attract Wasps I call this the Angy Wasp Orchid.

THE RETURN OF THE ANGRY WASP ODONTOGLOSSUM

Finally my mystery Odontoglossum has flowered!!

Onbviously this is a hybrid probably Odontoglossum and Miltonia from the shape of the flowers?

Now I had thought that this one was a wine red and white Orchid that I purchased from Tesco last year, err or year before lol?!

But I then realised that it was yellow and not white I realised it was an Orchid I refer to as the Angry Wasp, just my pet name for it you could say. Because it looks like a wasp and many types or Orchids are supposed to resemble a group of wasps hovering about on a breeze while giving of chemicals to make them appear to be wasps to, well OTHER real Wasps!

We can not smell it but it IS there and Wasps can and this way the Wasps go over trying to attack these Wasps to oonly result in the Wasp pollinating the Orchid flower. This is why many Orchids are not scented. Well noy scented to the human nose, no lol.

Anyway here is the first of a couple of videos I will do of thise one which has overtaken my Dondrobiums as being the earliest flowering Orchid in the new year.

Never thought that would happen and a couple od Dendrobiums do have buds.

I will also get back on my Orchid hunt this year and keep you posted.

Oh I almost forgot I have a few Orchids inbound too which are completely different to anything I have currently or have had previously.

Keep you posted on that front too.

VIDEO of MY WINDOW ORCHIDS

VIDEO of MY ORCHID TABLE TWO