Today we have one of our reliable miniature orchids that is always a mass of flowers during April and May.

Stelis muscifera is a tiny stelis species native to Ecuador and Venezuela where is grows as an epiphyte in moss and produces an abundance of short spikes and a mass of flowers.

We find it easy to distinguish from other miniatures when not in flower by its decidedly slim and pointed leaves 2-4cm long which are always a bright green.

We grow the species in baskets, mounted on cork and in pots, and it seems to do especially well in small pots where it enjoys daily watering but plenty of fresh air. The species enjoys shade and can easily be burnt by too much sun from April onwards and so we tend to grow it on a lower shelf in our cloud forest greenhouse.

Today we have another warm growing orchid from our Ikea cabinets.

Vanda chrisensoniana is a delightful miniature species. Our stock plant here a mature specimen and is now 20cm tall and has a mass of flowers opening on two 8cm spike.

Vanda christonsoniana is native to Vietnam where it grows in seasonally dry forest from sea level to 700m altitude. We have explored similar habitat in Laos and this forest is deciduous and semi-deciduous meaning this orchid has adapted to cope with bright light and dry periods. The leaves are almost terete and turn a red/purple colour when enjoying good light and the plant certailnly seems to enjoy our supplementary lighting in our cabinets. Adding grow lights to our Ikea cabinets was easy (they stick to the glass shelves) and our light give a 14 hour day.

The sweet little flowers last a long while and are butterfly pollinated with a long spur. The plant here is in a 1/3litre basket which we find ideal for growing lots of miniature orchids.

Our specimen plant of Platytstele misasiana is just about at its peak flowering today. 

This plant is in an 8cm basket and has about 150 flower spikes each with about 8 stary little yellow flowers - that is 1200 flowers!!! No surprise that Platystele misasiana is one of our favourite orchids.

To give you some scale the little starry flowers about 2mm across from the bright green 2cm leaves. 

The species also flowers well as a small plant.

This tiny miniature is native to cloud forests in Colombia at around 2000m and enjoys a shady spot in our cloudforests glasshouse (min 12C) with heavy watering throughout the year. The flowers are amazingly long lasting generally flower from March until June with us.

We grow plants successfully in pots and baskets and expect they would do well mounted to. Plants bulk up relatively quickly so all in all a lovely little species to grow and it can become a real specimen.

We have seen several Platystele species in their natural habitats and most have been tiny miniatures but all have had charming starry flowers. 

We have got small flowering plants for sale on our shop 

This week I will future some of the Phalaenopsis species puting on a great show in our living room orchid cases. 

The first species is Phalaenopsis schilleriana which has exquisite delicate pink flowers and attractive mottled leaves.

Most Phalaenopsis species are found in the region of the Philippines through to Borneo and Phalaenopsis schilleriana is found on Luzon and the surrounding islands. Like most Phalaenopsis species Phalaenopsis schilleriana is restricted to hot evergreen lowland forests where it grows on the bare branches of large trees. 

In cultivation we replicate these conditions by growing our plants indoors where its minimum temperature is 17C (though plants would enjoy it a little warmer than we do). For more info on how we grow plants like this check out our culture page.

 In the wild plants have semi shade from the canopy of the host trees and we have plants on a north facing room with additional light from grow lights.

Flowers are long lasting on thin spikes that tend towards pendulous so this is an ideal plant for a high shelf.

We have two clones of this species, one with deeper pink flowers (see photos) and we have pollinated both so will have seedlings from our lab in a couple of years.

Today's orchid is one of the species that got me hooked on orchids as a teenager. Oncidium alexandrae is a famous orchid from Colombia thta took the victorian orchid world by storm after its introduction to Europe in the 1800's. It's beautiful large while and spotted flowers resulted in horrendous over collection in its native forests and its continued conservation faces many challenges - there is a great article on the species by my good friend Phil Seaton here.

I have grown Odontoglossum crispum (as it was known until the 1990s) since the 1970s, and although the species has a reputation for being challenging, find it straight forward as long as it is provided with the cool, damp conditions it experiences in the wild.

The species grows from 2000-3000m in mossy primary forest with temperatures regularly down to 10C with very cool days. We grow our 'crispum' in our cloud forest greenhouse (min 12C with lots of fresh air and heavy watering all year - but especially when plants are in active growth. We find that plants flower best when the summer sun gives a slight pink blush to the leaves and so grow plants half way up the greenhouse in good light but shaded. 

As promised we have our second miniature orchid this week.

Stelis omalosantha is one of our smaller Stelis species and is found in Brazilian cloud forest above 1000m where it grows in shade. We explored this habitat during our school expeditions to Mata Atlantica rainforest and were very taken by the diversity of tiny orchids such as this species. The leaves are 4cm long and the delightful little furry flowers are produced well clear of the leaves.

Stelis is a large genus and we were particularly impressed seeing species in the wild covered in their tiny but beautiful flowers. Stelis omalosanthus has relatively large flowers for the size of the plant and they have tint hairs giving the flowers a furry look.

We grow our Stelis in our Cloud Forest Greenhouse where they are kept shaded and wet all year to replicate their cloud forest home. 

The plant shown here is mounted but plants do just as well in pots and baskets.

I have added an image of the Brazillian cloud forest home that Stelis omalosantha comes from. I took the photo in the dry season but as you can see the forests are shrouded in cloud (it is late afternoon) and the forest will be dripping wet by the morning.

Our greenhouses are full of delightful miniature orchids this morning and so we will feature several of the this week. The first is this remarkable species from Papua New Guinea.

The delicate little flowers of Mediocalcar decoratum are very unlike any other species we grow (apart from the closely related Mediocalcar biflorum) and it is always lovely when the little orange buds burst each spring.

As I have said, the species comes from Papua New Guinea where it grows in shady forest up to 2500m. Mediocalcar decoratum’s small bell shaped flowers in orange and yellow suggest that it is probably pollinated by Sun Birds. Sun Bird’s are Africa and Asia’s version of South America’s Humming Birds and we have seen some lovely species in Rwanda.

Although this is a cool growing Asian species its habitat in the mountains of Papua New Guinea is very similar to the cloud forests of the Americas and so we grow plants in our Cloud Forest Greenhouse alongside masdevallias.

We grow all our plants of Mediocalcar decoratum mounted which suits their habit and plants flourish as long as they are protected from strong sun in the summer which can dry plants too much, and watered well throughout the year. The moss you can see on the cork mount has developed naturally, we never use moss when we mount plants (see here for more detail on mounting orchids)

Today's orchid is a Asian classic. Cymbidium insigne is the main species behind hybrid cymbidiums grown all over the world.

Cymbidium insigne is a terrestrial species found in the mountains that straddle Northern Thailand, Northern Vietnam and Southern China. It grows in poor soils in the vicinity of Rhododendron species that it mimics. Bees mistake the Cymbidium flowers (which have no reward) for nectar filled Rhododendron flowers allowing the orchid to gain pollination with minimum use of scarce resources. The flowers are long lasting and come in shades of white, pink and cream. (Rhododendron colours)

The flowers of Cymbidium insigne are held on long upright stems to hold them clear of surrounding vegetation and this gives the species an elegance that is lacking in so many of its hybrids.

We grow many of our Cymbidiums including this species really cool in our Himalayan Greenhouse which has a minimum winter temperature of 7C, and vents that open when ever the temperature exceeds 15C. We replicate the monsoon conditions experienced in the natural habitat with heavy watering from April until the end of September and then keep the plants damp at other times. We believe that the most common reasons for people not flowering Cymbidiums are under-watering (especially in the summer months) or excessive damage from red spider mite that can easily occur if plants are kept too hot and dry.

March is a really flowery time in the orchid house here on Portland so you will get lots of orchids this week.

Today we have a small growing Masdevallia with big impact.

Masdevallia triangularis is a striking small plant (10cm leaves) with relatively large flowers 14cm from tip to tip) that are kind of triangular. Of course most masdevallias have flowers that are kind of triangular so I am not sure what encouraged English botanist John Lindley to single out this species in 1846!. The flowers have lovely red/orange spots and long, dark red tails.

The species comes from Venuzela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru and with such a wide distribution it is not surprising that the species is quite variable with colours from yellow through to dark orange.

This wonderful small growing species with large flowers a classic hummingbird pollinated orchid with its startling scarlet flowers held clear of the 5cm leaves. 

This is one of our top ten orchids and always transports me back to the cloud forests of Brazil where we found Cattleya coccinea growing as an epiphyte in mossy cloud forests in the Organ Mountains at around 1200m altitude. Plants were mostly growing in exposed positions where they receive good light, frequent mists, good air movement and cool temperatures. 

During our visits temperatures were around 12C at night and 22C during the day. It was very noticeable that the forest was dripping every morning from the mists and dew.

New growths have a single leaf that becomes purple in bright sunlight and the flowers are produced from immature growths. The flowers are pollinated by humming birds and are variable in size, shape and colour. Some flowers are rounder, some more angular, and some have considerable yellow on the lip and petals.

This does not seem to be the easiest plant to grow but the challenge is to replicate the plants natural conditions – Cool, wet, bright and windy. It is definitely worth the trouble and the plant flowering today in the greenhouse is growing mounted high in our Cloud Forest Greenhouse but in a spot that is easy to water so that we can soak it most days. Grown well they quickly make lovely specimens.

Todays wonderful orchid is the diminutive Rhynchostele rossii, a true cool growing orchid from Mexico a Central America.

I grew up with this species as Odontoglossum rossii and was wowed by it as a teenager. by the 1980s it had changed its name to Lemboglossum rossii and it changed again at the end of the 1990s - but whatever the name the species is wonderful.

Each year the plant sends out small growths with leaves about 10cm long that develop 2cm pseudobulbs. In early spring the flowers emerge from the base of the newest bulbs and are enormous compared to the rest of the plant (8cm across) The flowers are very long lasting.

Rhynchostele rossii is only found in high mountain cloud forests between 2000m and 3000m altitude and so comes from a habitat that is always damp and cool - very cool. This makes the species a little challengimng in cultivation and we have found that mounted it tends to dry out too much, in pots it sulks, and baskets are perfect. We water heavily throughout the year but plants have excellent drainage. We find it enjoys good light which makes keeping it cool enough in summer a challenge (keep it wet). The trouble is well worth it as our plant in the photo shows. If anyone wants a closer look we will have the plant with us at the Wessex show on Saturday.

Orchids are a wonderful diverse group of plants and this intriguing species exemplifies that diversity.

Pleurothallis truncata is an unusual species producing chains of tiny globular orange flowers that hardly open but give the most wonderful display.

The species is endemic to Ecuador where it grows from 1700m-3000m altutide in cool wet forest - so ideally suited to our Cloud Forest greenhouse (min 12C). We find the species thrives mounted, in pots and in baskets but if allowed to become too dry produced lots of little plants on the leaves (keikis) rather than flowers.

The species has the delightful habit of flowering when really small (under 10cm high) but over time becomes quite large.

One hypothesis for the unusual flowers is that they are hummingbird pollinated - very unusual for a pleurothallis. The close up photo shows the tubular flower structure presented for a visiting hummingbird - presumably one that likes lots of little sips of nectar. Humming bird pollinated orchids are usually red, orange or bright pink.