Bublophyllum medusae

one of my top list favorite bulbo, the medusae.

almost about hundred of laces like sepals in a flower bud but manages to unwind itself to bloom into this wonderful flower. so far no scent detected and the length of the bloom is about 11 inches. the pics here showing the sequence of the bud development and the last pic is the close up of the flower. has anyone with a medusae counted how many flowers that made up the entire bloom?

catasetum denticulatum

After two months of repotting it, finally setting out the second spike. initially when in came, the roots (the numbers can be counted), four of them if my memory serves me correctly were soaked in sphagnum moss. it looks a little bit moldy to me and not much of root activity which is rather unusual for a developing pseudobulbs.

hence the decision to re pot it was right though initially i am having cold feet about repotting it after all the eerie story i heard about denticulatum cultivation.
was told that these are one of those miniature catasetums, the bulb would only grow to 4-6 inches in size but however, there could be about 20 inflorescence per spike! that would be my next target to achive!

phalenopsis violecea coerulae

this is something away from my norm, most of my post would be on catasetum but got to post this one as well cause it is such a beauty.

just something different to share.

26 November 2011, from the first post till current date, the plant had already developed from one to three spike.

catasetum pileatum 'snow cup'

catasetum pileatum, one of the most sought after species by catasetum hybridizer and collector because of the large flower size. it came in many color variant, green , yellow, white and red.

got this plant about near to two years ago, initially thriving very well but soon it succumb to the snail infestation that came along with it. had no choice but to wait for the pseudobulb to fully mature before doing anything.

until of recent, one of the division decided to throw out the very first spike for me, and started to bloom. Yes!!! this is what i had been waiting for the white pileatum, my favorite pileatum of all.

flower is near to 4 inches width and 3 inches in height, initially started off with very green color but and even when it started to open, there is green color tone on all the sepals, petals and labellum. but as the bloom matures, the green discoloration is eventually replaced by the white form.

catasetum Gerhard Leiste (ctsm jumbo pearl x pileatum)

Grown this particular one from seedlings and finally flowered after 2 years. this is the first spike with three flowers. registered by Mr Tan Ching Heong, 8/7/2006. flower is about 3 inches across and with mild fragrance as most catasetums do. the coloration of the sepals are not as dark as depicted in the picture, mostly due to lighting effect. just slightly lighter.

However this particular hybrid had a labellum which its color is well contrast against the color of the petal. i got another compot of this Catasetum Gerhard Leiste, and i do hope they produce different variety of blooms. from what i observed in the nueery, some have a yellow back base flower with red freckles but nothing is close to this particular one. this would still be my favorite Gerhard Leiste!

catasetum cristatum

catasetum cristatum,belongs to the barbatum complexes of the catasetums.
the catasetum cristatum has also bearded structure like its brother, eg. the barbatum, gladiatorium, lanciferum and etc..
the distinction for the cristatum is that it has a rounded apex on the bearded structure.

just got this plant about three weeks ago. this one comes in quite a poor root condition, and i had removed it from the media immediately after the full bloom. as i removed the sphagnum moss and trimmed it till bare bulb. though the bulb are shrivel but still green and solid. i guess it will be sitting in the empty pots for several weeks before it send out a new keiki again.

just got this plant several days ago with the flower buds, not a very healthy plant and it's quite "shaky" (i guess the roots haven't really sets in or poor rotting system). and out of the four flower buds, two had died off, two more started to open up slightly yesterday.

usually when i purchased a pot of catasetums planted in sphagnum moss, i would pull them out of the pot and transfer to charcoal media (with or without removing all the moss) and they do pretty well with this method.

i got this denticulatum soaked in mix charcoal and moss, after three days of hesitation, finally i decided to do the same, and YES i was right, just recently re-potted with poor rooting system. transfer it to charcoal media in the same time keeping my finger cross as so far all the comments i got from several catasetums denticulatums' owners are "it's a difficult one" or "i had killed one of those before". well frankly speaking all these are giving me cold feet. Though i would proudly say that my mortality rate of catasetum had been very low so far, but my confidence for this one so far is pretty "shaky" as the plant.

the first picture is to show the comparative size of the denticulatum flower to other ctsm counterpart like the ctsm chong keng yong in the first pic (flower about 3inches across)