Cybil has been through some hard times. I had to rescue her from an illness that I was sure was going to kill her. She started growing new leaves and I thought we were on the right track for a long while as she grew a flower spike and gradually the spike showed buds. At about that time I moved her to face my lamp hoping that the consistent light source would cause the flowers to all face one direction. Suddenly the buds stopped growing any bigger and the leaves started to show some bad signs of yellow. I had to cut off almost 2 entire leaves before the illness spread and it took an unusually long time for the buds to start growing again. Eventually, though, they did open, kind of, and the photos are the result. You can see that the flowers did not end up facing the same direction, but more noticeable are the overall crappy condition of the flowers. About 2 of the older flowers at the top still aren't completely open and I don't expect them to open any further. The bottom sepals are also yellowed and look like stained sheets. I just hope that when these flowers drop the plant can recover and grow some badly needed new leaves.
The Orchid Society of California had it's Christmas potluck and end-of-year elections last night. I have been confirmed as the secretary of the board for next year so I'm a pretty big deal :) Along with a lovely dinner and conversation, I was lucky enough to have my raffle ticket picked early in the evening for the gift table. This beautiful plant was a hot item and I snatched it right up. The name is very long: Lc Miss Wonderful Billy B. AM/AOS X (Lc Tokyo Magic x Slc Dream Cloud) Heart of Gold. This is a Fred Clarke plant which is something special. He's a very respected grower and breeder here and runs a greenhouse in Vista, CA called Sunset Valley Orchids. He was the guest speaker at the November meeting which is where this plant was originally received by a woman who was nice enough to bring it back as a gift. You can see that there are many traits this plant got from it's large number of parents. The dark pink petals, the white striping, and the awesome yellow inside the lip makes this flower just jump out at you. One of the main reasons I really wanted this was that besides my Trick Sunset, I don't have any cattleyas that are anywhere near blooming size. This will make the long wait easier since most of my plants are years away from flowering.
I'll start this post by saying that something terrible happened to Quasar. Days after he bloomed, the petals suddenly began to droop fairly dramatically and I realized that he was very sick. The base of his leaves were a very dark orange/brown which to me was a sign of something I just wasn't equipped to cure. The flower became very soft but didn't fade the same way it would normally. The sad news is that I was unable to save him and to protect his neighbors, I had to put him down. I am very sad that this happened at such an exciting time in his life, but at least I did get one beautiful bloom.
Now for the good news! This is my newest bloom which I've dubbed Paphiopedilum "Venom". It's a wonderful green which was a surprise to me as I was expecting it to be dark red. Obviously I do not have the tag for it so I have no idea what type it really is but he's doing great! No sign of illness at all which I hope remains the case. I'm more nervous with my paphs as I see disturbing things on another plant and am really trying to prevent whatever it is from spreading. Ideally I would have a clean group of plants that I can just focus on helping thrive instead of trying to quarantine plants and worrying about infecting my healthy ones. Long Live Venom! So here is the wonderful plant I've been calling simply Paph. 1, but now have named "Quasar". The tag says it's the same plant as the Paph. Supersuk Pie, but you can see that the flower is very different so I'm not totally convinced. I made a couple of videos of it's growth because it was very fun to watch. I can't upload them here right now, so I may have to link to them later. Paphiopedilums are a slow plant overall; slow to spike, slow to bud, slow to open. I'd say that it's worth the wait.
This is the first bloom from my Psychopsis which I purchased from the Mother's Day show. It's an amazing flower, unlike any other orchid I've ever seen. I have been watching it grow one flower spike after another and kept wondering when any of them were actually going to produce a flower. Well here it is and I am told that they can keep blooming in sequence for months at a time.
I have officially killed my first plant. This was the Paphiopedilum Odette Doubled which I bought at the POE. After the flower dropped I gradually noticed the larger older leaves falling off. I've seen this before so I didn't worry too much especially because there seemed to be a healthy younger group of leaves sprouting up. I had already repotted this guy so I figured the roots might just be getting used to their environment. Well, when I did finally take him out to check, I saw the roots had this scary scale or fungus which was destroying everything. I don't know if it was scale because the leaves were not at all affected. I tried to move him to this cup and treated it with neem oil and peroxide. What I didn't do was use alcohol to remove the spots that were already there. I think this would have helped. RIP!
I've picked up more plants if you can believe it. This past weekend was the big OSC Mother's Day show and sale where I worked for 2+ hours both days. There was a table that had 3 plants I'd been wanting and there were tons of gorgeous Masdevallias that were all very tempting. I got a D. Burana Green Star (also called Anna Green which is how it was listed on my wishlist), a Masdevallia, a Psychopsis, and an Epilaeliocattleya Mae Bly 'Ching Hua Splash'. Earlier this month I also bought a Zygopetalum and Odontocidium from Trader Joe's. All of these wonderful plants are helping me avoid the day when nothing is in bloom. Oh how I dread that day.
It's spring and my plants are all showing amazing signs of life and growth. All that is, except for Cybil who's having a rough time. She's lost most of her roots and the ones that are left are not looking especially healthy. I've tried a few different bag methods and am now giving her nothing around the roots but she's sitting in a jar above some water with a bag over the top to provide moisture. The best chance for her is for her to start growing new roots which I still have faith is possible. For the rest of my plants, there's just many new growths starting. Finally, I've been meaning to share these photos of what my kitchen looks like on watering day. It's really exciting and makes the whole room feel like a jungle. I have determined, however, that this is too time intensive and so will not be bringing all the plants into the kitchen anymore, but trying to water them where they live for the most part. I'm always impressed with the selection of plants you can find at Trader Joe's. Just another reason they are the best grocery store. Even though it's a given that you'll need to repot when the flowers drop, the condition of these plants is always excellent. I picked these two plants up yesterday and am glad I did! The Zygopetalum is a great hybrid with larger flowers than normal and a very unique coloring of the petals and sepals. The leaves on this plant are so healthy and gorgeous, it's one that will look good even without the flowers. The other plant is an Odontocidium and is a sturdy flower with great exotic yellow/maroon splashed petals and sepals. I've never heard of an Odontocidium before, but I really like it and will be looking for more.
Mar. 26, 2015: I received my first online plant order yesterday from Carter and Holmes Orchids which I'm pretty excited about. This is my first time buying from the internet so I went fairly conservative and bought these two plants, the Laeliocattleya Purple Cascade 'Beauty of Perfume' and the Sophrocattleya June Bug 'Venice Sunshine'. These were very reasonably priced and I think the blooms will be great. I've repotted these as you can see and will be looking forward to seeing some growth that will ensure I've got good roots. In other news, here's a brief update about some of my other plants. Starting from the top left we have the second of two D. Kingianums I received from Heather Drobus. This one I've decided to name D. Kingianum Bea after my awesome niece. It's been growing the lovely new cane you see which I hope will produce some great smelling flowers for me this year. Next is the D. Spectabile which I decided to check on because it was just not doing anything. Turns out the roots in bad shape and I could barely find any that were alive. Luckily, there is some new growth shown by the tiny root in the photo. On the right we see the Miltassia Toscana which has two new flowers on the short spike. The rest of the flowers from the original spike have dropped. In the middle is a photo of Dennis who is still doing very well. His leaf has grown beautifully with a good purplish tinge. The lower left photo is my trooper Nemo who has three new roots that I hope will stick around this time. My Colmanara Masai has opened almost all of hir flowers and looks awesome. Finally we have a new flower on Valcor, making me a very happy plant lady. Valcor has been showing signs of health with his newest leaf reaching dramatically for the sun and now producing a new leaf.
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