Albert's Greenhouse

What's going on in the greenhouse is dependant on the season, strangely enough.
Despite relatively stable temperatures and moisture, the changing of day length brings different plants into flower at different times.

These huge stanhopeas grow in hanging baskets on a piece of metal pipe which runs the length of the single aisle in my greenhouse. The plants themselves are not too much to behold when out of flower. Squat pseudobulbs give rise to a single ribbed leaf each.

But sometime in late summer, a shoot pokes its way from the bottom of the baskets, and buds - sometimes just one, and sometimes as many as five or six, swell at the end of the hanging stalk. One night, they pop open and release what must be one of the nicest and mightiest scents in the greenhouse. The ratio of flower to plant size is nothing to scoff about either.

I find they do well in moderately bright light, and flower best for me with plenty of fertilization. The wire baskets are lined with long fiber sphagnum moss, then filled with a very lose, well draining mixture of wood chips, carbon, and clay pellets. Dividing and re-potting is needed every few years.

The infloresences look a bit like wax sculptures. They feel waxy too. They are complicated traps for little euglossine bees in their native habitat, and almost all have beautifully scented oils which fill the greenhouse with a pleasant aroma. The closely related coryanthes have even more spectacularly complex flowers.

I like these orchids. They are complex, not seen too often, have a very different flowering habit, and despite all this are remarkably easy to grow in a tropical greenhouse.