Orchid Board - Most Complete Orchid Forum on the web !

G'day folks.

Well, to paraphrase MLK, I had a dream. It was a good one. I've always loved orchids and my gran kept a goodly number. Like, up until about 5 years ago, somewhere in the thousands.

So when I decided that it was time for me to start collecting, I had a problem. If I collected orchids for beauty alone I would never have enough space to keep them all. And then it came to me last year - beauty plus scent, particularly scented orchids that can fill a room with perfume. The challenge is to fill the entire year with flowering, scented orchids. It's going to take quite some time but shouldn't require an overly-large collection...

So I did some research and last October I bought a large clump of Stanhopea Tigrina (or possibly S. nigroviolacea) bulbs. It was a great deal more than I expected and I now have 16 hanging baskets full of it. That should be a good window of scent in December/January filled up.

I began looking for other plants that were strongly scented - I wasn't in a rush or anything, but wanted types of plants that would suit and that I would enjoy.

And in December it all went wrong. Kinda nicely wrong. My gran's hothouses had been pulled down and my father told me that her remaining orchids were lying in a shed waiting to die. I couldn't let that happen. So mid-December (after a 600km trip) I got about 180 plants in poor condition, and my grand plan was ruined. Too many orchids? Well, we'll see.

All needed repotting (or potting) asap. There were some of everything, vandas, cats, dendrobiums, cymbids and oncidiums. And not a name-tag in sight.

About a month later, the kingianium (thelychiton kingianus, formerly dendrobium kingianus) from gran's tree in the front of her yard arrived. About 12 pieces of it, one so large that I can barely lift it - it's huge! And at least I know the name of it.

I stumbled by accident across the identity of one orchid that flowered out-of-season, dendrobium aggregatum. I have about 15 specimens of similarly shaped plants so I may have identified much more than the five pieces of one plant that flowered - time will tell.

And over Christmas I picked up some cymbidium maddidum (x3), cymbidium suave (x1) and sarochilus falcatus (orange blossom orchid x4). Scented all, when they get around to flowering, and well in keeping with the original plan.

In most of my researches this board came up via Google. It's a great repository of information and rather than merely lurk, I figured I'd better join.

I'm expecting that spring will be a good time out back and I'll be able to photograph a lot of flowers to try and identify them. But, of course, some may never be identified what with possible hybrids etc.

Ah...did I mention this site was a great source of information? I just got distracted while writing this and started trying to identify a second plant that flowered a while ago, found a name and the first thing that came up on Google images was...

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...rumenatum.html

That's about 5 more "mystery" plants identified. My, the flowers smelled good. It did seem that they had a kind of "transitory" scent, strong at times and at others barely noticeable. It might be that the strong scent lasts a short time from the opening of the flowers. (I managed to bring it into the house before the flowers opened, so I actually got to enjoy them, the flowers lasting only a few hours.) Nice plant, I'm glad I've scored at least one scented plant from gran. Or 5, rather. And one of these has put out 8 new canes since Christmas, so it should be spectacular.

Must go before I prattle on too long, as I suspect I have done already.

Cheers,
Aus.