New growing season in full swing

My beautiful stanhopea orchids flowering at the moment - many already showcasing their special, majestic blooms and many sending out new flower spikes to bloom later in the season. This year our weather is rather trying here in Sydney - very very hot and very very humid conditions making the major task watering and misting of all of my plants making sure they all receive the attention they require.

If you been growing stanhopea's for a while you will know that every growing season is different, each presenting different challenges and one learns to adapt to Nature because it's flowering time for stanhopea's.
Of course, in this heat the blooms don't last as long as one wants and pictures have to be taken very early in the morning as flowers just opening up and there are many other small adjustments required to bring the plants to it's optimum flowering stage, but all of them really just for one goal - after full year to see beautiful stanhopea's bloom once again, to greet old time favorites, to welcome new species and varieties and to experience and to glimpse at the Essence of Stanhopea's orchids.

Stanhopea Memoria Paul Allen

Stanhopea Tigrina var nigroviolacea var “Eddon” FCC/AOS

 

 

Stanhopea costaricensis “Patsy”

Stanhopea devoniensis x Assidensis

Flowering stanhopea's this week

Stanhopea Bellarensis x inodora

 

Stanhopea nigroviolacea

Stanhopea inodora x wardii aurea

Our stanhopea flowering season continues with many of my new plants started it's blooming season and some old favorites showing off it's beautiful scented flowers.

Every stanhopea grower knows that each season brings something different and it's all to do with weather changes during the year. All the elements are playing their part producing this wonder of Nature so when your plants start flowering it's always an anticipation to see beautiful orchids once again.

Stanhopea panamensis

This beautiful stanhopea bloomed right at the end ouf flowering season and it's stanhopea panamensis. Its native to Panama and it appears to be only growing in the area of the Cerro Campana, approx 50 km southwest of Panama City in high altitude of wet rainforests.

It was first mentioned in one of the orchids publications in 1988 and to date number of colored plants been discovered from pure white to heavy spotted varieties however all of them have stretched hypochil, flat and long.

My panamensis orchid have light coloring with a few spots on the petals, very interesting combination and it flowered with the most magical scent, layered with many tones to it. One can smell top floral tones followed by musk followed by herbal mixture - pure delight!

This specie well worth growing for any stanhopea collector, it's unusual and sometimes temperamental in cultivation - some years it appears to be just resting and then suddenly decides to reward patient stanhopea grower with beautiful blooms.

Stanhopea's New 2014 blooming season started!

Well, it's been a long weit for me, but finally new stanhopea flowering season is upon us here in Australia. For a dedicated "stanhopea lover" like me a few months without fabolous flowers at times difficult to endure, yet while logically I understand that one can not harry-up Nature, good luck explaining THAT concept to the heart...

What helps me during cold winter months is going over many many stanhopea pictures that I take during blooming seasons, remebering scents and smells, reading and learning more about natural envirnoment of some of the species, trying to replicate at least some of them in cultivation and collecting more of these beautiful plants. As with any stanhopea collector, it all comes down to patience - these orchids have way of testing it like no others...

And of course when one finally discovers some flower spikes pushing through the planters - everything is forgotten - just huge anticipation from seeing old friends in bloom again and meeting and discover new for me varieties and species.