Albert's Greenhouse

This past weekend, I finally got fed up with all my hanging baskets being either stuck to the walls of the greenhouse and therefore blocking light, or sitting on the benches and therefore not getting good air circulation and squishing flowers that come out the bottom. So I hung a 1/2" metal pipe down the center of the greenhouse and hooked up some drip irrigation. Most of the hanging plants, and especially the Stanhopea and Coryanthes orchids now have a place to hang which is more-or-less out of the way. There's even room for a basket of ant plant.

Stanhopea and Coryanthes are really fascinating orchids. They're called coloquially the "Bucket Orchids" because of the shape of their flowers. They are definitely epiphytic, as their huge and heavily scented flowers hang down below them. They attract little metallic male bees as pollenators, exuding a fragrant oil which the bees use to attract mates. The flowers are shaped such that in order to access the oil, the bee must land on a slippery part - if the bee slips and falls into the "bucket" of the flower, there is only one way to climb out - and that involves getting pollonia stuck to the back of the bee.

My most successful Stanhopea is S. occulata. The flowers look like huge wasps or maybe butterflies, and it smells strongly of mint-chocolate.

This greenhouse job coincided with my finally getting around to taking some cuttings of my dischidia major and my Lecanopteris sinuosa, which also found a place on the new perch - albiet without automatic water.

The hanging baskets down the center aisle do make things a little more crowded, but it's better than having all the baskets on benches, at least for now. Hopefully, it'll improve the performance of the Stanhopeas and so on.