Jumellea arachnantha in bloom!

My Jumellea arachnantha is in bloom for the second time since I purchased it at the Southern Ontario Orchid Society show in February 2008. It didn't bloom for me until last year and then again this year, so I am pretty happy with this plant. It has beautiful white flowers that are especially fragrant at night. To me they smell similar to an Easter Lily.

I also love the green foliage on this plant and the fact that the plants can get very large. According to Flora of Madagascar (translated by Steven D Beckman), the leaves on these plants can grow up to 70 cm long. They also have fascinatingly long spurs. The ones on my flowers are over 2.5 cm long. This orchid is native to the Comoros Islands off the southeast coast of Africa, which are the world's largest producer of ylang ylang essence. I bet those islands smell amazing!

Encouraged by this Jumellea success and inspired by the Brooklyn Orchids orchid of the week, I've decided that I might be brave and try another Angraecoid, perhaps the beautiful green Aeranthes grandiflora. Especially while I am not in such a temperate climate as the west coast of Canada. It's actually pretty darn warm in our house here in Southern Ontario in the summer!

Finally, an update!

Seems like a good day to post an update to the orchid blog :)

Hard to believe I haven't posted here since September, wow, 6 months ago! It's pretty easy to keep up with Twitter updates though, so at least I haven't fallen behind on those.

I've wanted to post some pictures for the last few weeks but alas I dropped and broke another one of our cameras so I only had my crappy laptop camera, not really worth posting! It hasn't been as a great a blooming winter as it was last year, but nonetheless I've had some good blooms. I think I'm most happy with the Coelogynes, that had the most blooms they've ever had this year. Below is the Coelogyne flaccida followed by the Coelogyne cristata:

I still have a nice purple Paphiopedilum hybrid in bloom and my Dendrobium monoliforme just finished blooming. The monoliforme is pictured in a new-to-me Italian pot I found in an antique shop in Austin!

Finally, I'm heading to Washington, DC next weekend for a work conference and am hoping that I have some spare time to head to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History to check out their current exhibit Orchids: A View from the East. There is also a related exhibit going on at the same time, The Orchid in Chinese Painting, exhibiting at the Smithsonian Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Hope I can get to both of these places while I'm in town!