dendrophylax

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Recently I came into a windfall of new plants, which led to the desperate attempt to make room for all of them. After a very long day (and nearly passing out from bleach fumes a few times), I've finally gotten myself set up where I'm comfortable with where things are as far as light, moisture, and overall appearance are concerned; hopefully I will get some flowers in a few months, but as it stands I've just got courses and courses of plants. Most fortunately, the huge number of new plants also came with a huge number of plant hooks, without which I never could have made room for all the new arrivals.

( Here are some pictures! )

At Lowes a couple months ago I picked up a Cattleya hybrid for 6 bucks, which to be honest has sort of ugly flowers but it was cheap and I don't have the whole Cattleya rainbow yet. Recently I've been building out my database by getting the whole lineage down on plants, and this one is one of the most hilarious. I am writing these out for everything in my collection that is a hybrid: it got long.

( This got long )

It's been a while, but mostly because everything has been staying the same. A few casualties though: The Masdevallia got heat stroke in the move months ago and died, and more recently I had a fat-cat related tank cave-in and the Angraecum, which I had been babying and taking such good care of, got killed: the tank lid sheared all of the leaves off the top, no recovery from that. Those are two really huge hits, because they were the two I was looking most forward to getting to flower. I'm getting some mildew on the roots of some plants because I don't have adequate ventilation, just stuck a fan in there to move things around for 5-15 minutes a day. Overall it's growing season, so there are lots of leaf nubs and meristem growths, but nothing flashy.

The one exception is that the Cycnodes is blooming right on schedule:



Hooray!

It's also that time again: time to innoculate against the scale insects that have only, surprisingly, seemed to infest the Brassavolas. I've got them mostly under control at this point, there are a couple leaves that don't look so hot, but that was from a year ago when the thing was starting to look the wrong color from all the little buggies. Have not seen a zonitoides in a year now, so my snail eradication program was a complete success.

Also just got a phalaenopsis rescue (yes, another one) that was simply CRAWLING with mealybugs. They had wiped out an entire leaf, but I've been monitoring it for about four days now and have not seen another one. Root system was shot to hell, but that's to be expected from these grocery store jobs.

Had to also remove the Sophrolaeliocattleya from the high humidity, its roots were getting a bit soggy. Moved it to a lower humidity/higher light area, seems not not be degrading any further. The ever-suffering vanilla is once again producing new roots and new leaves after being savaged by cats now THREE times. That thing does not quit.

The Dracula had some die-back on one of its stems but now is producing flower spikes again. I've got the fan on it to get the air moving, hopefully these won't blast like they did last year.

Overall, I've got a surprising amount of recovery from the very traumatizing move, even the Dendrochilum which I thought would probably not make it is growing now... 6? 7? new leaves. Only thing that isn't producing any change at all is that poor Ikea Zygonisia; it's still looking good though, and I've brought things back from worse.

I've made a short tally of the tribes of all of the plants, and besides onesies like the coelogyne tribe (Dendrochilum, who knew), and the vanilla tribe (obvious which one is here), all of my plants belong to one of five tribes.

The vanda tribe has the Angraecum, the Phalaenopsis, and the Vanda (vanduh?).

The podochilus (goddamn weird plants) family claims the Dendrobiums: anosmum, lindleyi, nobile, and cruentum.

In the maxillaria family we have the Maxillaria, the Gongora, the Lycaste (which apparently used to be classified as a Maxillaria, so I'll have to add the syn. to my database), and the Zygonisia. I've got to get more of these, they are very exciting.

In the cymbidium family I do not, unfortunately, have a Cymbidium, although I hope to rectify that shortly, but I do have the Cycnodes, the "Degarmoara," and the Oncidium-- I know exactly what to expect out of the cymbidium family now, although I am sort of surprised to see the oncidiums in there. I would eventually like to add a Psychopsis to this section as well, but those are really testy and I'd like a more stable environment for it first.

And lastly in the largest represented group, the epidendrum family (which is, honestly, massive), all the cattleya relatives so the Brassavola, Brassolaeliocattleya, Laeliocattleyas, and the Sophrolaeliocattleya, but also the Dracula, and the Prosthechea ("Encyclia," but not really). I actually really like the epidendrum family, since they grow sympodally and get really huge and really big adult plants can have tens or hundreds of flowers on them. And they are often fragrant or exhibit huge or colorful flowers. I would have one more epidendroid but my Masdevallia is gone gone gone. I'd like to get something else from the pleurothallidinae subtribe, they're a remarkably alien looking group of plants, and specifically something like Pleurothallis phalangifera or, one of the most beautiful of all pleurothallids, Pleurothallis wagneri. A lot of pleurthallids don't even look like orchids, as one conventionally considers them. Ah, love. Maybe one day i'll get one of the true "black orchids," Pleurothallis teagueii.

I am already leaning towards the idea that the Zygopetalum is a Zygonisia, not a Bollopetalum; Cynosure 'Blue Birds' or 'Murasakikomachi.' In fact, it's probably a Cynosure. In which case it is

Aganisia cyanea x Zygopetalum 'Skippy Ku' (Zygo. graminifolium x Zygo. intermedium). Orchid nomenclature is one of the most infuriatingly inaccurate practices ever. Everybody contradicts each other, and it's no wonder that every asshole in the entire world that "discovers" or breeds orchids gives them more stupid names.

For instance, some sources describe Zygo. intermedium, Zygo. maculatum, and Zygo. mackayi as three distinct species; many say that Zygo. mackayi is a synonym for Zygo. maculatum, and a few say that Zygo. intermedium is a synonym for Zygo. maculatum. Lastly, one source even described Zygo. intermedium as being possibly a regional sub-type of Zygo. mackayi. MAKE UP YOUR MINDS! I get mad when all these Victorian men get in pissing contests over 1) who "discovered" the plant first and 2) who gets to put their name on it. Like Bollea? Also known as Huntleya, why? Mr. Huntley wanted to name it after himself. And Bollea was even renamed Pescatoria! There are TONS of orchids named something veitchii, because the veitches were filthy rich and obsessed. It's sort of the same thing as A.P. Carter copyrighting ever song the Carter Family sung, whether they wrote it or not.

Some of the Victorians even made it into the modern day without having their genera challenged; Brassavola, Cattleya, Broughtonia, Pabstia, and Goodyera spring immediately to mind. I do find it interesting that most of the genera are from Greek roots instead of Latin, which was Linnaeus's own preference. Rhynchostylis, Coelogyne, Prosthechea, Zygopetalum, Bulbophyllum, etc. Greek adds a little mystery, I think, since English is rooted more in Latin and European culture as a whole has a more recent history with Latin. It's one way you can make a guess, often, whether a species you are reading about is an orchid; if it's got Greek roots in the genus name. Of course, it doesn't work all the time, and doesn't even work most of the time, but it's worked quite often for me. Woo!