Barkeria lindleyana

Barkeria is a dramatic genus from Central America and at IOPO we have three species and all of them have large spectacular flowers as well as interesting growth habits with masses of roots.

Barkeria lindleyana is found in from Mexico to Costa Rica in warm deciduous forest where it experiences a distinct dry season. It responds to the dry habitat by producing a mass of roots and growing tall canes rapidly during the summer growing season. The flowers are beautiful and long lasting.

We find that Barkerias need to be mounted to do well as the roots rot in pots and we hang the bark mounts high in our Cloud Forest section where plants get bright light and dry out rapidly after daily spraying especially in the winter months when our minimum of 12C is a little on the cool side for the species. Barkeria lindleyana flowers when quite young from shorter bulbs but as it matures produces longer and longer bulbs with more and more flowers and our specimen here has three flowering canes with the longest over 1m tall. 

As you can see the roots are not that interested in gripping onto the cork mount and some extra supports are handy during flowering