AboutOrchids

If it’s feeling cold and dark where you live, there’s no better escape than a very tropical orchid show. Welcome in the new year with beautiful flowers that take your imagination away to warmer, sunnier lands.  This is a partial listing of shows, so if you don’t see one near you, check your local [...]

This mini Masdevallia relative, with a flower smaller than a pea, has a long name, Scaphosepalum. Despite its diminutive size, it’s capable of staying in bloom for months or even years at a time. The new flowers emerge in succession along a lengthening spike, while the older flowers fall off.

Several years ago, this orchid bloomed [...]

I’ve been loving this orchid book I got, a great gift from Dave’s grandmother Audrey. It’s The New Encyclopedia of Orchids: 1500 Species in Cultivation, by noted botanist Isobyl La Croix of the Royal Horticultural Society. Within its 500 pages, there are lots of interesting and unusual orchid species, many not commonly seen. You’ll find [...]

The upcoming winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year, but on the California coast we’re lucky to be able to garden year-round. Despite the pre-winter chill, my friend Kim has lots in bloom in her garden. She lives a few blocks from us near Dolores Park, and she’s an orchid nut like me! [...]

Related to Miltonia, Oncidium, and Odontoglossum, this charming mini species is an easy orchid. Cochlioda vulcanica is frequently used in hybridization, cross-bred with orchid relatives to pass on both its hardiness and its beauty.

It lives in tropical cloud forests at high elevations in the Andes, where it is pollinated by hummingbirds. The side view shows [...]

As we move through the last few days of autumn, in the Northern Hemisphere at least, don’t panic if your orchid drops some leaves or looks a little peaked. With less light and cooler days, many orchids are resting in their dormant periods. If your plant is otherwise healthy, and a few leaves drop, it’s [...]

Regular readers may notice a penchant for the unusual in my orchid collection. So this Trigonidium egertonianum, with a flower that looks like it could be the face of a crab, should come as no surprise. It’s another example of the incredible diversity within the orchid family.

This orchid is native to a wide area of [...]