Coelogyne schilleriana cultural advice
 

Hello all-

This past week at the Tamiami show I was fortunate to acquire a number of plants on my wishlist.

One which made it home with me (not on my wishlist) after quite a bit of discussion with the vendor was Coelogyne schilleriana; Discusstion with them had me feeling confident about my ability to get this one thriving, but much to my dismay and once reality hit I've realized there's very little supplemental information about this species outside of orchidspecies.com.

Curious to know if any of you have had success with this species. Mine is just entering winter dormancy so I've got a little time to figure this one out :)

I have other species but not this one. Based on locality information in IOSPE, your summer is probably similar to what it gets in habitat. I would contact the vendor about winter care: How cool is reasonable? How dry should it be? Does it get more light in winter because trees drop their leaves? Or does it grow in evergreen forests, shaded all year?

Did you see the flowering Coelogyne rochusseni?

They said they've had success treating it like a deciduous Dendrobium and recommended an average diurnal temperature difference between day and night, and brighter light during the winter. For my conditions, it'll approach 80 during mid-day but will ease down to about 60-65 at night with higher relative humidity.

So I'm keeping it with my Den. unicum and hoping for the best- the Coelogyne is pretty established with 40ish bulbs, so hopefully it has the resilience to put up with the occasional guesswork.

With my plants I never feel comfortable with one or two sources of information- I have to read everything available and then synthesize the data. This plant is throwing a wrench into the works :biggrin: I can't wait to see it bloom.

Wow, that's a huge plant. Which vendor had those?

If you haven't grown Coelogyne before, they should stay quite damp once they start growing. If it develops climbing or rambling rhizomes, with roots in the air, you need to wet those roots every day in the growing season.

It is- and they offered it at a good price. I purchased it from Claessen Orchids, who I believe are based in Germany. Really interesting selection at the show, plants were impeccably healthy, and their mounts were all compressed cork bark which I can't really find in the US.

Thanks for the tip- after looking more into the genus I have a strong feeling I'll pick up a few more. And moisture is something never in short supply in the swamp I call home.