Finally: Disa uniflora flowers!

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Pay off for sticking with orchids in the genus Disa was well worth the effort and the learning curve.

Still learning how to grow this wonderful genus of plants.

From tip of the dorsal sepal to the tip of the labellum, it is about 3" tall.

From the tip of one lateral sepal to the other, it is approximately 3.5" across.

The petals and the labellum are all about 1" in length.

From the top of the potting media to the top of the plant in full bloom, it is about 8.5" tall.

[naoki]

That is exciting, Philip! Isn't it a challenge to deal with heat in LA? I'm also going to give a try this year.

[Paul]

Congrats, Philip! I've always loved Disa. Don't see myself ever trying them though. I understand they are quite the "divas" -- if everything is to their liking they perform wonderfully. If anything is off, they sulk and die.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

It's only super warm during the summer here.

I haven't taken this plant through summer yet, but I don't think it'll do anything to the plant. There have been some growers who say that heat approaching 100 F didn't do damage to their plants.

The thing I'll mention with Disa uniflora is that once it blooms, the mother plant starts dying. The offshoots are the ones that continue growing. With my plant, I don't see any offshoots yet. They may be hidden under the potting media, or they may be dead, I won't know until I get an opportunity to dig the plant out.

---------- Post added at 08:59 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:49 AM ----------

What I've discovered about the difficulties with stream side Disas, was my understanding of what people meant when they said that you must grow Disas "wet".

I did a test on another Disa uniflora, a Disa tripetaloies, and Disa aurata which were not thriving to see what the problem was…

To my surprise, they didn't need to be kept all that "wet". They liked to be grown moist not wet.

Once I stopped overwatering, the Disa uniflora in these photos, did what it was supposed to do.

I haven't perfected growing this group of plants yet. I get varying degrees of success with the genus in general.

So far, what was sold to me as Disa bracteata appears to be the hardiest of the 3 species of Disas I currently grow. I just don't know what this species' growth habits are. It's kinda an oddball and quite honestly, for an "invasive weed" it grows very slow. From what I'm seeing so far, Disa sagittalis grows much faster and is far more of a vigorous grower than Disa bracteata is.

I detailed some growing habits of Disa sagittalis on my Flickr account, though. I hope to get some daughter tuberoids of this species, and hopefully one of them will bloom later in the future. It's still too early to tell.

As far as stream side Disas are concerned, this is a definite milestone, so from here, it's on to the next marker event for these group of Disas.

[billc]

Nice bloom and great color.

Bill

[WhiteRabbit]

Beautiful!

[orchidsarefun]

magnificent !

[RosieC]

Congratulations

I know these have been a trial for you and it's great to see it's paid off!

[s.kallima]

Superb, congrats!

[stefpix]

I have some seeds. Philip, do you have any suggestions ( Bletilla striata seeds germinated succesfully on live moss and they are still growing). Saw a Disa uniflora once in bloom and i loved it. congratulations on your efforts.