Mini Scaphosepalum Orchid Has Incredible Blooming Power
This Scaphosepalum species is a mini Masdevallia relative with incredible blooming power. The plant shown in most of these photos flowered continuously for over five years! Its new blooms, each smaller than a pea, continually emerge along a lengthening, zig-zag flower spike. The first photo in this series comes from a plant we recently saw in Kew Gardens, but the rest of the photos show my plant during that lengthy bloom cycle.
This tough, little cool grower can handle sun or shade. Unlike many other Pleurothallids, this species is fine with tap water, at least here in the SF Bay Area. Native to cloud forests in the Andes, it can live incredibly high at 11,483 feet (3500 m) elevation. Daily watering and cool, moist breezes keep it happy.
My plant has noticeably shorter flower spikes on the coast, probably because it’s so much windier here than our sheltered garden in San Francisco. The flowers are just as frequent, except they’re much closer together on the shorter spikes. I’ve had this same plant for over a decade, and it’s been in bloom most of the time, even when temps have dropped close to freezing. After flowering constantly for over 5½ years, it stopped for eight months, and then resumed again in earnest. Now it boasts over a dozen flower spikes. I hope it has many more years to go.
Explore posts in the same categories: Cool Growers, Growing, Mini Orchids, Photos, Watering
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