fuzzy Toilet Bowl Orchid

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 4:51 pm

I have been waiting for this mini orchid to bloom for a while. It is Pleurothallis amparoana from Costa Rica and it does look like a shag toilet bowl. I did a stack of 25 shots with HF. Will post some more when I get some more blooms on the plant.

Flower is about 6mm wide.

1/80
F4.5
ISO200
Some unsharp mask to bring out the hairs a little.

Just to show the difference..this one was not stacked, just auto focus.

Macro Beauty · Post by **Macro Beauty** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 8:24 pm

Absolutely gorgeous!!! The stacking sure does make a difference. Thanks for posting it both ways, so we can see the contrast. You have quite a talent with flowers too. Very nice to have your subjects right at home. I think that orchid is much too beautiful to be nicknamed toilet bowl, though it does look a lot like one.

MacroLuv · Post by **MacroLuv** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 9:35 pm

A very nice lilliputian.

And you are very weather iindependent with your terrarium.

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 4:34 am

Macro Beauty replied:

I think that orchid is much too beautiful to be nicknamed toilet bowl, though it does look a lot like one.

Heck, from the title of the post I thought he found one growing inside his toilet bowl!

I tell ya Doug, you sure have a green thumb and a way with these tiny orchids, such a beautiful specimen and great photographs of it. To tell the truth it is sort of an inspiration for one to start growing these tiny beauties themselves.

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 5:21 am

Thanks Everyone. I have to say that I usually pick the orchids that say "Easy To Grow" on the decriptions and the terrarium is a great place to grow them in our dry winter homes. Here is a picture of my dining room. All the wood slabs hanging near the window are Air plants, I even have some Spanish Moss hanging on the right hand side (I have plants in the livingroom also).

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 7:38 am

Doug,

If your home has a dry atmosphere in winter how do your air plants survive so well, I thought they liked a humid atmosphere? I have heard of people who grow them in their bathrooms as the warm humid atmosphere there suits them.

DaveW

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 8:00 am

Hi Dave...one thing that helps is having all the plants in one area. It sets up a small microclimate. I spray all the plants about twice a day and soak the airplants in a plastic tote box around every week or two to rehydrate them and keep a shallow tray of water on the radiator. They can take a little abuse. They love being out all summer (all my plants are out all summer). Here is a link on general care. http://plants.web-indexes.com/airplants ... -care.html take care. Doug

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 9:04 am

Doug,

I never had much luck with Bromeliads because I tried to grow them in the greenhouse with cacti and it was hard to keep them wet enough, although some are virtual xerophytes like Hechtia, maybe I should have grown those, or in our cold climate Dyckia's?:-

http://bromeliadsocietyhouston.org/html/hechtia.html

http://www.bromeliadsocietyhouston.org/html/dyckia.html

Guess I was trying the wrong sort.

I don't have room in the greenhouse to grow the biggest bromeliad of all Puya raimondii though these grow high up in the Andes. In the link below they grew theirs from Karel Knize's seed although Friedrich Ritter listed seed in Winters cactus seed catalogues in the 1960's, but it's eventual size put me off trying it!

http://anwyl.com/puya_photos.htm

http://www.sfbotanicalgarden.org/news/p ... mondii.htm

DaveW

MacroLuv · Post by **MacroLuv** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 11:06 am

Very nice jungle there, Doug.

A nuber of years ago I had a couple of Philodendron and Musa plants and if I didn't buy a machette they would surely take control over my home.

One of my Musa plants (a mini one) even produced a little pinkish banana shape like fruits. And I got one of the Philodendron (I think it was, but not sure, in the jungle you never know where one plant starts and other ends

) into bloom with a nice little white flowers that smells lusciously. Besides, how about Cacti? You must have a cold place for them during winter season to grow them properly. Right?

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 11:58 am

MacroLuv

"Besides, how about Cacti? You must have a cold place for them during winter season to grow them properly. Right?"

If you were asking me? I do in fact run a cold (unheated) 12'-6" (3.81m) x 18'-0" (5.48m) greenhouse full of the things which gets down to 28 degrees Farenheight on occasions. On cold nights the plants are covered over with several layers of newspapers and I usually get through the winter loosing very few, though the odd one may mark occasionally. I also cover down with bubble polythene sheet.

Most of our members however do heat their greenhouses but it is simply frost exclusion only. Most cacti want the same cultivation methods as Geraniums through the winter.

I used to heat years ago and I think the plants get an earlier start but as the collection and heating costs grew I am now too mean to pay for heating, they have two choices they live or they die! I obviously do not grow the more tropical cacti, or at least the few I do are brought into the house over winter, rather akin to Doug's plants.

Yes most cacti do need a cool dry overwintering and are best in a cooler room with full daylight that does not have too high central heating if kept in the house. I do not grow the so called "other succulents" that generally need a higher winter temperature because do some grow during our winter.

My plants go dry from September to the end of February in the UK and shrink quite noticeably. This is another reason they do not want to be in high heating environments as they will dry out too much or you will need to water throughout the winter which means they do not have a rest period and flower so well next year. A couple of days after their first watering the following season you can really see just how much they have shrunk as some of the small ones almost double their size.

Years ago cactophiles in the old Eastern Block, due to fuel to heat greenhouses being in short supply, used to take their plants out of their pots in winter, wash the soil off the roots and wrap them in newspaper and store them in their cellars over the worst of the winter. Provided the plant did not grow they did not get any etiolation and planted them again next season - a bit drastic but it kept their hobby going.

DaveW

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 3:47 pm

Some real nice info Dave. I have only three cacti in my plants and as a matter of fact I have not brought them in yet. We have had some frosts already and I keep on forgetting to bring them in but they still look OK. Here in the winter it gets cold enough near the windows that two out of the three always bloom in the spring, the third one has never bloomed in the 6 years that I have had it. Keeping the airplants looking good during the winter does take a lot of work but I like taking care of them. I like Cacti also but I don`t have the room

Gordon C. Snelling · Post by **Gordon C. Snelling** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 8:05 pm

That is a super little orchid. I love Pleurothallis species.