Encyclia summer bloomers.

[megrim]

Summer is well and truly in full swing in my part of Australia.

Temps have been between 35C and 45C most days, with the occasional day or two of relief. As always, my Encyclia/Prosthechea/Anacheilum and allied groups are loving the heat and putting on some lovely and incredibly fragrant displays.

Here's the latest to open up, still a bunch more in bud.

First up is Encyclia adenocaula. As always, the flower spike is big and heavy enough to warrant weighing down the pot to avoid falling over. Nice and fragrant, smells like a spicy honeyed perfume to my nose.









Next up is my Anacheilium radiatum. Strongly fragrant of black pepper and soap.







And finally my Prosthechea cochleata with its oddly short petals and sepals. Strong scent on this one too, but not quite as pleasant as the others. Somewhere between pepper, honey, latex and sweaty foot

[silken]

Your Encyclias are beautiful!

[megrim]

Originally Posted by silken

Your Encyclias are beautiful!

Cheers!.

I've always had a thing for the whole Encyclia tribe - though they've been scattered to the four corners of the taxanomical world these days.

I also have a single bloom left on my cordigera, I didn't get to it in time to take photos this year.

The cochleata is the new one for me - I held off on them for years because it seemed only about 50% or so of people found theirs fragrant, and I primarily keep only fragrant species and hybrids.

On the upside, I have found this cochleata to be fragrant, on the down side, it's not an especially nice smell It also has much shorter petals and sepals than most I've seen, as well as being more yellow than the usual mint-green.
It has two siblings still in bud, their buds are longer and darker than the blooming one - so I guess I'll see if this one's just a bit of a snowflake or maybe all of them are weird/have a bit of something else in the gene pool.

[WhiteRabbit]

Fabulous! Good growing!

[RosieC]

All really pretty, love the delicate colours!