On a late September afternoon a visit to the Orchid house revealed some spectacular flowering orchids along with a few that required some careful observation to see.

A rarity indeed was the discovery of a speckled Restrepia tichoglottis (first image in the gallery) flowering in the back-of-house greenhouses. I managed to get a decent enough picture. A limitation of camera phones is that they’re perfectly designed for a selfie of human proportions, but getting it to focus on a miniature orchid flower requires more engineering and a steady hand.

However, there was plenty to see in the main Orchid House and several spikes in bud which will require a hasty return to catch open. One intriguing large bud belonged to Paphiopedilum Hisae’s Royal Duck, a hybrid between Paph. Bel Royal and Paph. adductum bred by Sam Tsui. It’s not surprising that this has Paph. rothschildeanum as an ancestor. Its worth a visit to just go see this one in flower!

Another but much smaller plant of interest was Mormolyca ringens, a neotropical species that employs sexual mimicry to fool male bees of the Scaptotrigona genus to pollinate it. A member of the Maxillaria clan (Maxillariinae), it enjoys similar cool conditions.

Cymbidium season is well underway and you can see several specimens in flower and others with mammoth spikes ready to bloom. A fairly recent introduction to the house is a display of Phragmipediums at with their feet in water, just how they like it. In flower now in the very beautiful Phragmipedium sedenii.

The final plant of  anticipation was labeled Dendrochilum javieriense, Kew names it Coelogyne javieriana, a Pinoy species found on  the island of Luzon. Only relatively newly described in 1989 found growing above 1000 meters, it was first listed in Phytotaxa in 2021!