Wow that is spectacular! What I want to know is how to get these pretty little ones to bloom! Do they need a dry rest along with cooler temps during the winter? What is the secret? Tracy has tried helping me, but I guess I'm still not getting it!
Thanks Ross! I googled matsushima and found to my surprise that there is a whole Japanese cultivation tradition of D. moliniforme varieties, which you knew already of course.
Becca, I grow the plant just like D. nobile: warm in summer, cool and rather dry in winter. I guess I'm lucky to have just an individual plant that is flowering very freely (it's a cutting from an equally rich flowering plant of one of my friends). I have a wild type D. moliniforme (white narrow sepals) that is much more difficult to flower.
When the bulbs have formed their last leaf I gradually cut back on watering and after two or three weeks I am on the winter regime, which is occasionally misting and lightly watering (not soaking as I do in summer) every two to four weeks.
By the way, the flowers you see are on the bulbs of last year, and on the bulbs of this year I can see already some slight swellings of new flower buds, so if I would give too much water now (indeed: before next May!), I'd get mostly keiki's insted of flowers.
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