Orchid Man in the United Kingdom

Grammatocymbidiums are an exciting novelty that’s only very slowly found its way into Europe, and it’s still hard to find them anywhere unless you know where to look. They are a hybrid between grammatophyllums and cymbidiums. Making them basically heat tolerant cymbidiums that can flower whenever, without the need of dramatic temperature changes, cold nights, and keeping it outside all year round until first frosts just to have that hopeful flower spike. Oh no! These plants can grow comfortably on your windowsill all year round, and will flower with beautiful cymbidium flowers. Most of them are fragrant too! As I said earlier I love cymbidiums, and I could never grow them properly and flower and now with my own plant – I just got it today! Im going to try to help these beautiful hybrids to get a foothold. Just look below!

I love cymbidiums, I truly do. The foliage is fantastic, reminding me of little palm trees – or not so little in some cases where the plant is the size of a small palm tree. The big fat vigorous bulbs and their power to grow fast and survive so many types of environments and lastly the flowers. Cymbidium flowers are among the most bellowed of all orchids to me and I never can get enough of them. But, there is a problem here. I am really bad at growing them. Actually absurdly bad. Actually probably as bad as with growing cattleyas. The common Chinese cymbidiums that are sold in our UK garden centers are unfortunately cold growing plants that require you to either have a greenhouse or a cold porch or keep them outside and then bring in. So I can’t really do that. In fact I can’t do that at all. I have a patio. If I leave orchids outside they will become the lair of slugs, spiders, ants, catepillars and anything that crawls outside. And that’s the big NOPE for me. In fact last...

April has brought us some unusual events, full lockdown, life threating pandemic, and oddly enough on top of that nice sunny weather. Its nature’s tongue-in-the-cheek i think.  In the growth space there is a few interesting things happening, the biggest one is that neofinetias woke up and are growing rots like mad. Because the living room plant stand where they are, doesn’t get sun till after 3PM, I’m having the LED lights on through most of the morning. However, i have completely unplugged the heat mats as they were drying out the sphagnum moss way too fast and I was really worried it may be more damaging to the plants than actually doing any good. Neofinetia, at the end of the day are intermediate to cool growers I don’t want to push my luck. And there is so much to see, the three (now four) no ID neofinetias are growing like mad. One was growing so vigorously it split itself in half as the new roots were pushing the other fans away, which is interesting and I never saw...

Brassavolas are one of the very old, showy orchids, with a almost Victorian charm to them. Bearing a single star shaped flower, which has a heavy late evening perfume to it. This beautiful species was originally classified and named in 1813 by Robert Brown, who was a Scottish botanist, and he dedicated the species name to the famous Italian physician and scientist Antonio Musa Brassavola. That's that about history, let's get back to the matter at hand, Brassavola David Sander hybrid is a child of Brassavola cuculata and Brassavola digbyana. It combines the beauty of both. It hold the wide star spread petals of b.cuculata, and the delicate feathery fringe from digbyana. The hybrid has the typical and lovely brassavola foliage that reminds me of pine needles, or how growers call them "pencils". And they are lovely this way. Something peculiar about their beauty and elegant shape, why? Cattleyas have a tendency to be very ugly plants when not in flower. The foli...

You may say to me I'm obsessed about this type of phalaenopsis and the truth is I am. I fell in love with the colourful waxy hybrids of the Happy Eagle type. I describe them this way because they really remind me of the precursor in the way the bloom. Something a bit like phalaenopsis Bellina, but the colours are different, the fragrance is more fruity and heady. They are also so much more vigorous, happy and resistant to damage, pests and disease. Especially the phalaenopsis Dragon Tree Eagle, actually it was a mistake when I ordered it. I wanted the Happy Eagle and I choose this one. I don’t know why. Probably because there is so much Eagles around it’s hard to get confused. So I did. This one is a hybrid between Phalaenopsis Penang Girl x Phalaenopsis Black Eagle, and it can come in a variety of different colour coordinations. And now it’s in flower and I absolutely love it. The plant so far is quite small meaning it’s young enough but it looks like I...

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Dear readers, I am incredibly happy to show you how my rare and marvelous Paphiopedilum Bidburough has been doing, and indeed it has done extremely well! You can tell this one has received a lot of awards, including vigor as i call it a weed. It grows like mad and doesn't require any excessive care. I would love to invite you to watch my below video where I talk in length on this: https://youtu.be/mwfCHFUrQaQ