Cycnoches Golden Showers

[Bud]

(herrenhusanum x chlorochilon)
This orchid has very showy magnificent flowers. It’s like pendulous swans gracefully cascading towards the sun. This has a pleasant fragrant combination of a jasmine/lily scent that is strongest by noon.
The growth habit is unusual…. after flowering, they drop their leaves and require a dry rest until they begin sprouting new growths that needs to resume water and fertilizer when the roots are two to three inches long; watering during the dry rest period, will cause the plant to rot and die; but there are exceptions that survive even if watered in dry rest they manage to grow new canes but the flowers are not as robust as when it was given proper rest. I spray it a bit if the canes shrivel. I like to repot this after the dry rest when the new growth at least reaches 5 inches, often dividing the plant so that there is one pseudo bulb per pot. These plants have unisex flowers, meaning male and female flowers can appear on separate plants (or, rarely, in different flowers on the same spike.) The sex of the flowers seems to be partly controlled by temperature and light intensity, but it's hard to predict. The two types of flowers often look quite different from each other.
I give this a culture with intermediate to warm temperatures, 70-80°F (21-27C) during the day and 50-60°F cooler at night. Bright shaded light on the farthest end of the south facing window and I give this an electric humidifier with an oscillating fan reaching a calibration of 50-70%. Fertilizer weakly weekly with seaweed mix.