Flowering now at the castle

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This is a holiday weekend in the US. I've been using free time to repot and straighten up the growing area.

Prosthechea vespa came from Ecuagenera bare root in October 2021. I put it into S/H in a large plastic container from a dollar store. The wall it's resting on is 8" /20cm wide. The two growths now in spike were young then, so this is not all my doing.



It's supposed to be fragrant. Flowers began opening a week ago. I haven't noticed any fragrance. There is a sunburn mark on a leaf.





This is Eulophia macra in a 5-gallon/19-liter plastic nursery container.



Eulophia is a terrestrial genus from Africa and Madagascar in the Cymbidium alliance. A fair number are grown by succulent lovers, and one has escaped to become a weed throughout the tropics. They are very easy to grow.

Eulophia macra is a terrestrial from relatively high elevations in central Madagascar, the dry part of the island. It came from the Huntington plant sale booth at the 2015 Convention of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America in Tempe, Arizona. The Huntington got it from Grigsby Cactus Gardens in Vista, California. In the 1970s when Madagascar was being explored by people looking to bring succulents into cultivation, Grigsby received, propagated and distributed a lot of material new to gardeners.

Most Eupha. species are small plants. "Macra" means "large"; it has the largest pseudobulbs of the genus.



To compensate it has the smallest flowers of the genus. I don't have a close-up of the tiny flowers because the photo on IOSPE is better than I could take with my phone.



I grow it in a 5-gallon pot with a mix of mostly #4 (XL) perlite and a little bagged potting soil. The extensive roots reach all the way to the bottom of the pot.

I keep it moist and well-fertilized all spring-summer-fall, and water a little in winter. I discovered our summers are too hot for it, even in the shade. It spends the summer in my sunroom. I put it outside while nights are cool. I don't know whether it will tolerate any frost. Other plants from the highlands will, but I bring it in on cold nights.

This year it made 5 spikes. The first was promptly chomped. Three have matured, and the last was bitten off just above the second branch. It has been flowering for about a month.

I divided it at the 2015 Convention and gave a piece to some Canadian conventioneers who also grew orchids. I hope it's in cultivation somewhere in the far north!

This is the first flowering of my SVO 7453, Lc. Naranja en Flor. Here is the flower from February 14:



And from today:



It is (Lc. Trick or Treat 'Orange Magic' AM/AOS x Lc. Spring Fires 'Lenette #1'). Trick or Treat is 75% rupicolous Laelia (or Cattleya) and 25% Guarianthe (or Cattleya) aurantiaca. The name in Spanish means "orange in flower." It should have flowered in summer 2021 but I wasn't able to give it the best care then.

I grow a lot of winter-rainfall bulbs. This is one of many color forms of Oxalis obtusa.



It is completely dormant in summer and needs to rest bone dry. I store the pots in a shed protected from rats, and begin watering in late fall. Flowers require direct sunlight to open. People with sunny, cool greenhouses can grow them in cold winter climates, but they really shine in Mediterranean and other cool-winter climates. A few winter-growing Oxalis have been able to survive in the ground here despite our occasional summer rain, but they don't spread enough to become invasive. You can read more about them here.

This is Moraea speciosa, from winter-rainfall deserts of southern Africa. It is flowering for the first time.



Moraea is a corm-forming genus in the Iris family. Linnaeus must have liked them a lot; he named the genus after his in-laws. I imported these seeds from Silverhill Seeds in the Republic of South Africa in the early 2000s. I have two remaining plants. This one was not self-fertile, and the other plant didn't flower this year. I need to wait to set seed. You can read more about it here and here.