New 2019 Stanhopea flowering season

Our new stanhopea flowering season here fully started now and once again I am surrounded by beautiful stanhopea’s with their flamboyant and mysterious flowers and textures and colors and heavenly scents.

 Every flowering season is different and I am hopping to see many of my plants in flower, to great and old favorites as well as welcome new for me species, varieties and crosses. My personal collection of stanhopea’s steadily increasing and there is always hope to see new for me flowering stanhopea and to share it’s beauty here in this blog with all friends of stanhopea orchids around the world.

Stanhioea impressa

Stanhopea Mem Paul Allen

Stanhopea shuttleworthii - Libano clone

Stanhopea shuttleworthii - light clone Libano area

Stanhopea shuttleworthii - Libano 1 light clone

Stanhopea shuttleworthii - Libano light clone 2

Our stanhopea flowering season here already started and at the moment I have many blooming plants which I hope to feature in this blog soon.

One of the first ones to flower was stanhopea shuttleworthii, unusual and interesting light colored clone native only to a small area of Libano in Colombia - the whole blooms of the lighter pastel colors with very nice strong herbal and spicy scent. I purchased this orchid a few years ago and been waiting patiently for it to bloom and this season it's first flowering time - it did not disappointed - large, perfectly sculptured blooms with heavenly scent - another great addition to my stanhopea range. 

Stanhopea shuttleworthii

Here is an introduction to another beautiful and rather rare stanhopea - stanhopea shuttleworthii. It was named afer famous collector Shuttleworth who was collecting orchids for a firm in Chelsea, England in late 1800's. Shuttleworth found this special stanhopea in 1875,  growing in New Granada ( today Colombia) on the boarder of Reo Magdalena in the state of Tolima and shipped it to England from where it was distributed to various orchid enthusiasts.

To this day this very decorative species continuous to be rare in collections and to see its flowering gives me great pleasure and excitement. The plant itself is of medium size, with smallish bulbs and leaves yet the flowers are large, appearing in pair on each flower spike.This season my plant developed two flower spikes and the one in the picture was the first flowering. The colors of the blooms very vibrant, bright burgundy with many spots on the overlaping petals with white/creamy background. The scent is very strong cinnamon with vanilla tones and lingers for a long time.

Stanhopea shuttleworthii is another beautiful orchid that delights any stanhopea collector who appreciates these stunning marvels of Nature.