Welcome to the Orchidkarma blog. My name is Karma and I live in Gothenburg, Sweden. A certified orchidophile with a definite penchant for orchids of the Pleurothallid Alliance, but we don’t have an exclusive relationship - at least not yet. Gothenburg International Orchid Show 
The largest orchid show in Sweden - September 24-26.
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 I have been looking forward to this one all summer, it is such a strikingly beautiful flower and the first time it blooms for me. I bought it last fall and I think I actually stalled it a little bit by repotting it, but now it is fianlly blooming and it is also coming with three new shoots at the same time!
Phragmipedium besseae is a warm growing litophyte/terrestrial species come from the wet montane forests on the eastern slopes of the Colombian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian Andes where it grows at altitudes of 100 to 1500 meters. It is pretty compact but the inflorescence is quite tall, measuring about 40 cm and presents up to 6 flowers in succession. Phrag. besseae is a fairly new discovery, described by Dodson in 1981, and it is accredited with the resurgence of interest for the genus in cultivation. Three people actually found the species but Elizabeth Besse, one of the three, inspired its name.
Phragmipedium require the use of really good water quality in order to do well. I use RO water for all my orchids, but you could also use rain water. Since this genus love water I grow all mine in semi-hydro culture with volcanic rocks. No complicated setup, just a clear plastic pot placed on a saucer with about 2 cm of water. That way they have access to constant and even moisture. They can be a bit sensitive to fertilizer however so it is very important not to use too strong concentration and to flush out the pots regularly with pure water. I grow mine in intermediate temperatures in the growing window under additional lighting, quite bright actually, almost Cattleya levels.
      
This is a lovely little epiphyte hails from the Comoros and Madagascar where it grows in humid forests from sea level to 600 meters. I got mine from the German grower Karge a couple of years ago and have since been growing it mounted in the warm vivarium. I grow it fairly bright, perhaps 10 cm from the light (9000 lumen), and I was rewarded with three inflorescences this year. Each inflorescence carrying about 12 lightly peach colored and wonderfully fragrant flowers.
Apparently I was experiencing some technical difficulties after the transfer of this site to a new webhost last night… but it is finally back up now. Thank you for your patience!
This is a small epiphyte from Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador where it grows along streams at altitudes between 400 and 1100 meters. Since it grows on pretty low altitudes it is also more tolerant to warmer temperatures and do well in intermediate culture. The small flowers are perhaps not as showy as some other Masdevallia, but I think they are really striking against the dark EpiWeb backdrop with the tall erect inflorescence holding the delicate flowers high above the leaves. Each inflorescence produce several flowers that open sequentially so it also blooms for a long time.
I bought mine from Orchids & More in Germany back in 2008 and actually bloomed it once on the windowsill, but that time I only got one inflorescence, this time I got four and the plant looks a lot happier all together. You can grow many Masdevallia on the windowsill, I used to do it and they bloomed for me there. But I can see a huge difference in all my Masdevallia now that I grow them in a vivarium. I grow this cool, mounted on EpWeb under medium light and high relative humidity. The high RH is a requirement for this genus to really thrive, even though many will survive under less ideal conditions.
 Clamshell octopus, that sounds like something our of a B-horror flick… but the common name for this species is the cockleshell or clamshell orchid, although we tend to call it the octopus orchid (bläckfiskorkidé) here in Sweden. It is not hard to see why, either name fits the bill. The flowers are about 9 cm tall and are actually quite unique as they are technically displayed upside down. In most orchids the labellum is located below the column, but here the labellum forms a small hood (or shell) over the column. It has a successive flowering style and it can bloom for 6 months or longer, usually with 4-6 open at a time starting in the spring. Mine bloomed for 8 months last year, we’ll see how long it goes this time… we are coming up on 3 months now I think.
Prosthechea cochleata used to be included in the Encyclia genus until recently and I still see a lot of people (incorrectly) calling it that. It is a medium-sized epiphyte that grows from south Florida, through the Caribbean, Mexico and South America, and it actually enjoys the status as the national flower of Belize. It thrives in warm temperatures, but it has no objections to my intermediate growing room either. It prefers even moisture and fertilizer all year and I grow mine successfully in semi-hydro culture using volcanic rocks as media. Apparently you can eat cooked psuedobulbs from this species, but I can’t say I have ever felt compelled to try this…
 It’s bellina season again… It smells lovely in the warm vivarium right now, although I think my particular clone has a pretty weak scent for a bellina. Some say one flower can fill an entire houses with its fragrance, mine is definitely a bit more shy than that but I do not mind. This species likes it hot and humid, why I keep mine in the warm vivarium. If the RH drops too much it will either refuse blooming all together, or drop a bud… which is what happened to me this time. Darn.
We are on vacation so I only get into town to water every 5 days, normally I mist in the warm viv every other to every 3 days and this keeps the RH (relative humidity) at a comfy level (85% +) without any misters or foggers. The five day stretch have meant a little dryer conditions in there, perhaps down as low as 55% at day five, and the bud following the flower in the photo actually dropped. So I devised a very simple solution to the problem. I filled a plastic mesh pot with sphagnum moss, soaked it in water and placed it on a saucer with more water. I placed my humidity mound in the middle of the viv letting it evaporate gradually. This actually worked and kept the RH well over acceptable levels again. The mound was still soaking wet when I came back in to water this time. More buds are coming so all is not lost.
By the way, what do you think of the sad butterfly (or alien) in the center of the flower…?
 It was finally time to repot the little seedlings I bought from Ecuagenera in flasks at the orchid show in Gothenburg 2008. Since deflasking them I have grown them intermediate/warm in a small mini-greenhouse and communal pots with sphagnum moss. It is recommended you grow all small seedlings, even cool growers, a bit warmer but now I thought they had grown large enough to move into the cool vivarium with the grownups.
They have been progressing slowly, oh so slowly, over the past two years… you have to be very patient to grow orchids from flasks… I needed to deflask them almost immediately after arrival since the agar had begun to mold inside, you can see it in the first flask photo below, this slowed down their progress some. It is best to let them grow inside the flask as long as possible, until they no longer fit or the nutrients in the agar is spent. But at first sign of mold you have to take them out since mold can quickly overtake the whole flask, killing the seedlings. It is not unusual that you get mold however with pressure changes in air transport allowing air to get inside the sterile flasks. This is the chance you take when you buy flasks.
The Masdevallia were of a decent (but not great) size when I got them and established nicely outside the flask. I have an almost 100% survival rate among the Masdevallia infracta. The Dracula babies however were very small, less then a centimeter tall, and I was unsure they would even make it at all. Many of them did not, but I have 3 very strong seedlings left. In all fairness, the Dracula babies would have done a lot better with a bit higher RH than I could provide in my nursery and many of them have simply whithered away. Unfortunately most of the Masdevallia decumana babies were lost to mold when we were away on vacation about a year ago, I have one very tiny seedling left, we’ll see how it does now…
        
I mounted the Dracula babies on EpiWeb and potted all the Masdevallia in a couple of communal mesh pots in EpiWeb substrate. The easiest way to do this without damaging the roots is to simply sandwich the seedling between 2 or 3 pieces of EpiWeb nuggets, then place them side by side in the pot kind of like stacking Lego. I am looking forward to seeing them thrive now, all and all, the cool vivarium can provide much better growing conditions for these little guys. It was as fun windowsill project though and I am satisfied with the results.
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So the weather prognosis is predicting a lot cooler temperatures from now on, down below 10 C at night and below 20 C during the day. So I thought is was time to pack up the air conditioning unit for this season and reconfigure the cool vivarium for winter. A fairly easy job actually, I just unhooked the AC and replaced it with the cool air intake hose connected to the fan pulling air from the outside. I will monitor the temperature in the vivarium for the next few days to make sure it does the job, but I think it is going to be fine.
