Happy Valentine's Day

Phalaenopsis Golden wonder 13 Feb 2011

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! I trust you will be enjoying yourselves and spoiling your loved ones accordingly.

Yesterday I finally managed to take some more images of some plants that are just starting to flower. Without fail, Phalaenopsis Golden Wonder has sent out a huge spike of particularly impressive blooms again but I am still waiting for the "blue" Doritaenopsis to open its buds. I must say that I am rather impressed with this little Doritaenopsis as you will see in posts to come. It is a small plant but the spike is almost as long as that of P. Golden wonder and it is carrying 12 buds. I am looking forward to its first flowering and of course trying my hand at hybridising it with P. Golden wonder and another unidentified rescue Phlalaenopsis which will also flower soon for the first time. I have included an image of one of my flowering Stenoglottis hybrids. I have been battling to pollinate the flowers because they are so tiny but hopefully those first 3 spent blooms on the spike are now fertilised successfully and should produce seeds.

Stenoglottis hybrid 13 Feb 2011

I also thought it might be useful to some readers to include some of my own stats on germinating and media used. I have included in table form a short summary of what orchid species (hybrids not included) I have managed to germinate and the different media I have used. Some terrestrial species germinate faster on BM-1 full strength than MS half strength. This is particularly true for some of the Summer rainfall Disa species and is possibly attributed to the critical role that water plays in their germination. MS medium is high in various salts which could be lengthening the time to germination due to the increased dissolved salts affecting osmosis. Please excuse the minor typos in the text below. The PDF converting to JPG did not agree with the word Stenoglottis and has omitted some spacing between words.