Pretty Red Orchids!

I still think this is Potinara Ching Hua Flame 'Red Rose' but still can't be 100% sure -- it might just be an SLC Jewel Box clone, but I don't think so. The plant is too compact and neatly upright, and not very big, and the flowers have much better substance. This NOID came from a raffle following the New York International Orchid Show; Kawamoto Orchids was a vendor, and they do carry this clone, and the picture and description match my plant pretty well. (The original price tag matched their price at the time too.)

This is the best set of blooms it's ever had! Being very close under the lights helps...gee, getting lots of water and food seems to help too, not to mention air circulation in hot weather. Frankly I'm amazed to get such red red red flowers in summer, when cool weather usually produces brighter reds.

Now if only the rest of my mini catts would get in line...

SEPOS/Longwood Gardens 2011: My purchases

Another fantastic orchid show come and gone. We spent 3 hours in a car to get there from NYC, anticipating the beautiful things we'd see. And what do my friends and I do first? Why hit the sales tent of course.

• Aerangis hyaloides -- an entire compot in flower!
• Anoectochilus burmannicus
• Anoectochilus albo-lineatus 
• Bromheadia brevifoli (mounted, adorable pointy green leaves)
• Bulbophyllum comingii
• Cynorkis fastigiata (I know, I know, it's a weed, go away)
• Dendrochilum javieri
• Dendrobium normandbyense
• Dend. tosaense
• Dend. Angel Baby (fantastic awesome hybrid, and covered in buds)
• Dend. Aussie Chip (another one, yes)
• Habenaria medusa (yes I've lost my mind)
• Podochilus muricatus (mounted, adorable rounded green leaves)
• Stenoglottis woodii (adorable fat little green leaves)
• (SLC Dream Cloud x BLC Love Sound)

About my usual ratio of species to hybrids, lately.
Once the shopping was done, I could begin the important business of taking lots and lots and lots of photographs. Lots and lots. Ooh, lots.

(All this happened in March, of course, and here I am only now remembering to finish & publish the post. So a few updates are going to overlap this...o well.)

Aerangis hyaloides

Miniature orchids don't get much cuter than Aerangis hyaloides. They are perfect scale miniature versions of larger more familiar species like A. biloba or A. citrata, and that of course increases their cuteness factor by many orders of magnitude.

When I saw compots of this species for sale by H&R Orchids at the SEPOS/Longwood show, for only $50, I flipped and immediately bought one. Not only were the plants all fantastically green and healthy, they were all in flower. Well not all. But nearly every one that was big enough had at least 1 spike and the pot was peppered with sweet crystalline white flowers.

Considering what individual blooming-size plants cost...yeah. No brainer. So today I finally took the compot apart, and ended up with a simply ridiculous number of mature plants and babies. 12 with spikes!! and another 10 that are nearly blooming size. I potted them in sphagnum moss in tiny plastic pots, for now. The biggest ones are solo, the next size are sharing pots in pairs; the tiniest ones got a new compot arrangement for now.

Having wonderful adorable little planties to trade or sell is a good thing! Now to find ideal spots for the big ones I'm actually keeping...

Anoectochilus albo-lineatus

Jewel orchids fill me with wonder. Even simple "ordinary" Ludisia discolor charms and amazes me with its beautiful deep velvety leaves sparkling with golden crystals.

Anoectochilus albolineatus is fairly small, I suppose, for a jewel orchid, and doesn't make many leaves before it flowers. There is nothing especially spectacular about its foliage -- as sparkly and lovely as it is, I wouldnt' be able to tell it apart from most other Anoectochilus-es at a glance. But when I spotted them for sale at the Longwood Gardens show -- at a mere $10 apiece!!!! -- I snapped up four of the little darlings. Each darling consisting of 2 tiny darlings -- so eight?

A couple of the growths were kind of limp, doubless due to the trauma of show transportation. Since drought = death to these delicate dainties, I had to figure out impromptu terraria for them. I stripped off the outer layers of sphagnum moss from their tiny root systems and carefully tucked them into clear plastic wine tumblers with a nice moist layer of fresh clean sphagnum. I covered them loosely with a little plastic wrap. The photo shows the result. (One was limper than the rest, and that one is in a larger plastic covered dish along with other plants needing a bit of spa treatment. It's perked up nicely.)

I remember a friend of mine once nursing along a tiny scrap of A. roxburghii, using fresh live sphagnum moss in a brandy snifter. Things kept nibbling at it, and finally it did rot away, but that high humidity did keep it going a long time. I appreciate the hardiness of Ludisias all the more, now.

Habenaria medusa, or Unbridled Optimism

I happen to love terrestrial orchids of all sorts, and lately have been making real efforts to grow more varieties. Modest success with fairly easy plants such as Ludisia discolor v. alba, Stenosarchos Vanguard and Stenoglottis sceptrodes is one thing; modest success with Habenaria rhodochila is a pleasant thing indeed. (I refuse to speak of my numerous attempts to cultivate Macodes petula. Suffice to say I will Try Try Again.) So I recently obtained two Habenaria medusa tubers with nice healthy sprouts. I love H. medusa. I have seen it alive and in person, and this is how it looks:

Or at any rate, this is how it looks when my friend Lenny grows it. This is another view of another plant grown by my friend Marc:

That is to say, when grown by people who know what they're doing. This, on the other hand, is what I have to work with:

I've potted them in the same mix in 2 different pots: Peat-Lite soil-less mix combined with seedling orchid mix (fir bark, perlite, charcoal) and scraps of osmunda (from a pretty old bag I kept around for nostalgia I guess). One is in plastic, one in clay.

Along with the other terrestrials I'll be tracking their progress pretty closely. I'd like to not screw these up...

New Orchids from Deep Cut Show 2011

One thing about tight space in one's collection...and by tight space I mean Nowhere to go outside the light zone...is you can always find room for a few new plants if you're creative enough. And if you've killed enough older plants. I was determined to be disciplined in my shopping at this show simply because I had to be...and I knew going there that I was probably going to be shopping at the SEPOS show at Longwood Gardens in March where there are even more vendors of stuff I adore. And I was good. I didn't overbuy. Not by too much. Only by a few. Really. The Deep Cut show was in mid-February. So yeah, I'm a little late writing this up. Oh well. Here's what I got...

• Doritaenopsis Purple Martin "Kingsir" (Kenneth Schubert x Phal violacea). A real cutie pie. Tiny flowers for the size of the plant, but the spike keeps going and going. And the color is marvellous, that lovely lavender that coerulea Phals have.


• Paph. Lynleigh Koopowitz (delenatii "Dumbo" x malipoense "Beheaded"). Because, awesome. The fan is enormous, and should show a spike ANY DAY now.


• Maxillaria schunkeana. My second attempt at this singularly awesome species.


• Maxillaria pulla. This one is going to live on the windowsill next to the surviving masdevallia.


• Epicattleya Landwoods "NN" Not-too-tall plant, and gorgeous extremely full, waxy flowers. I looooooove green flowers, especially on Cattleyas and Epicatts. Oh, and fragrant!

Not too shabby a bunch. And I did find room for them all.

February Big Beers Flight

David Copperfield's has had some truly wonderful stuff on tap these past few months. Craft brewers have been rocking the winter and "big" beer categories for a while now - and we got to taste not only fresh offerings but vintage brews as well, from 2009! So a couple of weeks ago it was impossible to resist the multiple temptations on offer, and we ordered a flight of five and two pints besideds.

Wexford Irish Cream Ale was not a big beer or a winter warmer. It was at least an ale, of sorts. Blandly easy to drink, smooth, malty and light on hops.

Likewise, the Smuttynose Baltic Porter was surely a porter. A textbook porter: smooth, dark, ligth body, the usual coffee/toffee notes, sweetish finish. A perfectly nice porter if you are in the mood for one without much challenge.

Stone Lukcy Bastard was surely a Stone brew. You could tell with one sniff, you thought you were settling into a nice half grapefruit for breakfast. Reputedly an oaked blend of Arrogant Bastard and Double Bastard, it does have that malty oomph that makes Stone superior to Rogue if you think beer superior to citrus peel. There was really nothing memorable about it.

Stone did much better with its Imperial Russian Stout 2009. Hops were pretty much absent from this offering, as one would expect, in lieu of deep rich caramel and chocolate flavors and a few welcome coffee notes. The brew was dense, rich, winy, deep, a bit sharp on the tongue, really a perfect example of the style. Wonderful stuff.

Founder's Breakfast Stout 2009 was quite interesting, and as Spouse ordered a pint of it we had much to contemplate. The notes say it is brewed with an "abundance of flaked oats, bitter and sweetened imported chocolates, Sumatra and Kona coffee." The coffee notes were actually a bit muted for all that. There's a light coffee aroma, mingled with rich malt. Strong fizz, light body. The coffee and chocolate flavors blend nicely without tasting burnt, and there's a clean, sweetish finish. No hop bitterness to speak of. I didn't miss it.

Unibroue is one of my favorite breweries, and I will always gladly try whatever they make. Trois Pistoles was an absolute treat. As an abbey-style strong dark ale, it's still (no fizz) and dense. The aroma was full with sweet rich fruit and malt. The apple/apricot fruit flavors shaded ever so slightly into bubblegum esters on the finish, but the stronger essences were cherries and port. Seriously! In just an abbey dark ale! Lovely with food, too. I've since had a full serving of this brew and loved it even more.

Finally, there was Smuttynose Gravitation. Unlike the porter, there was nothing else to really compare this to. This powerful brew (12% abv! that's wine!) is a Belgian Quad made extra-oomphy by the addition of "200 pounds of raisin puree per batch." The nose is fruity (it better be!) with distinct raisin and prune notes. The body is oddly light, nearly porter-like. I found distinct concord grape, cherry and berry flavors mixed in with the rich caramel malts. The finish was clean, a bit sweet and tart. Spouse complained of an unpleasant undertaste, that I either did not notice or mind. I would like to try it again some night before an hour of eating and drinking caused congestion to foul up my finer taste abilities.

Some fantastic beers out there. Cheers!