I really like that 'Tropical Ice'! Alas, every terrestrial I've planted has failed, with the exception of Epis and Sobralias.

Ken, be on the lookout for the terete 'rat tails' Oncidiums. I am not finding any for sale and I want to try them again since I can do dry just fine! I want stacyi and jonesiana. I had a cebolleta way back in the 70's. I guess they are just out of favor. Also Siedenbachi a mitrata. And maybe para phal group.

You are so into the exotic/rare field, Bert. I will probably never see them since I typically am only looking at orchids that are available at wholesale prices. I can't buy retail if I hope to sell a plant. You are a collector!

Ken, we have Encyclia rufa, Encyclia tampensis and some Spiranthes that are native to Manatee county! I remember my first time seeing one...tying my shoe on a hike and standing up face to face with an E. tampensis cluster of little purple pseudobulbs climbing up a tree trunk.

Now neat, Kate! I continue to amaze everyone here, growing my Spanish moss. I keep thinking that this will be the year that our 20's and sometimes teens will do it all in. I do lose a bit of it (it could just be old age rather than cold. What do I know? ) but it is still flourishing. I experimented with some of the Florida native tillandsia (non-Spanish moss) to see whether it would take our cold. Everything left out perished when it got into the lower 20's. Now I know. Experiment over!

karmatree said:Ken, we have Encyclia rufa, Encyclia tampensis and some Spiranthes that are native to Manatee county! I remember my first time seeing one...tying my shoe on a hike and standing up face to face with an E. tampensis cluster of little purple pseudobulbs climbing up a tree trunk.

Isn't that the most wonderful way to see a native Orchid? I would love to know what kind of Spiranthes that was.

In fact, I have a whole huge old coffee-table size book of orchids that are native to Florida. My pool guy had it, and gave it to me as a gift. There are hundreds, but most of them you'd just walk by and never notice, some are very fleeting, and of course some of them don't even look like orchids at all. The famous Ghost Orchid (Dendrophylax lindenii) has no leaves and what green tissue it has is on its roots. I've got a couple of little starts of Epidendrum magnoliae aka the Green Fly Orchid that has leaves less than 2in. long and flowers about the size of a dime if you're lucky. Fantastic fragrance, though.


Then we have some wild "invasive" orchids too. I was at the Extension office one day when a lady brought in a grocery bag with about a dozen plants of Oeceoclades maculata in it, saying "do you know what these weeds are? They're all through my mulch pile!" Here's the story on that one, and a really neat site in general for native orchids
http://www.flnativeorchids.com...

Interesting read. Who would have thought that orchids, particular tiny ones, would be invasive?

Ah, Prem's website! The Best on Florida's Orchids!!

We took a ride out to our Pennsy place today, the cottage came fine through the Winter, no busted pipes or anything of that sort. I will post some pics of the place next.
Coming home, the greenhouse was bathed in sunshine, so I just had to take a couple of pics quickly before I lost the light.
The Dendrobium farmeri opened a modest spike this week

Ctna Why Not started up too

The digbyana x will surely drop these frilly blooms very soon

And I wanted to show the Vanda tricolor suavis spike in sunshine

Beautiful, Ursula. I love the yellow/white color combo on the Den farmeri - who needs daffodils when you've got those?

Ken, did you check out the Gallery of Wild Orchids on that site? It has all the really nice ones, but by no means a complete list.
http://www.flnativeorchids.com...

Eggs sunny side up?

I did, Elaine. Quite informative, even if incomplete.

Pretty farmeri, Ursula. I repotted mine 2 years ago and it has pouted ever since. One more year without blooming and it goes to the compost pile.

Jim

Then, orchids being as perverse as they are, you'd find it blooming a couple of months later - in the compost pile.

I'm off to the USF Spring Plant sale. I have no clue what I will come home with.

Jim

I have seen Spiranthes longilabris, and yes, I discovered all of these by complete and fortunate accidents...i.e. tripping on something, getting whacked in the face by a branch, etc etc. My son and I like to sneak off the main trails and use animal trails-- we get to see a lot more that way. And yes, that website has been my Florida native orchid bible!!!! And this has been my guide for the wild Tillies. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/uw205

And that digbyana is outstanding!!!!!! I love that pale yellow color.

Kate, normally a regular species digbyana surely wouldn't last that long, I posted this plant in bloom at the end of March. This one is (old name) Blc Hawaiian Green Valley x Rhyncholaelia digbyana. And it really looks like a big fat digbyana! I like it a lot too.

- looking for wild Orchids, going off trails is many times the best way to discover something new.
We made some mistake in our early years of looking for Orchids at our place in NE Pennsy. - by tracking a specific single Platanthera macrophylla, we probably made a trail too easy for Deer to follow. We tracked the leaves for several years, it bloomed and then the whole top of the spike was chomped off, leaving just enough blooms for identification. The plant never came back! Later on we would place wire cages around single precious plants.
The first Orchid we found in Pennsy was a small Spiranthes cernua:
One day in Fall we spent a whole day with a chain saw keeping the woods from encroaching the Blueberries/ the meadow. At the end of that day as we were done pulling the chopped small trees into a pile into the woods, Klaus just called to me to bring the chain saw down to the cabin. As I bent down to pick it up from the ground, I saw a small white blooming spike. I screamed loud for Klaus to take a look! We had never see this wildflower before and it was just a miracle we hadn't stepped on it during all the work we did. We both layed on the ground, I took pictures, used a magnifying lens, we checked our books, and sure enough, we had Spiranthes cernua.
Then in days and months and years to follow, we found them on many other spots too, and we discovered other native Orchids as well.

901Bertwood said:Ken, be on the lookout for the terete 'rat tails' Oncidiums. I am not finding any for sale and I want to try them again since I can do dry just fine! I want stacyi and jonesiana. I had a cebolleta way back in the 70's. I guess they are just out of favor. Also Siedenbachi a mitrata. And maybe para phal group.

I have two of the four Paraphals (serpentilingua and labukensis). My quest for denevei continues. I have killed 3 flasks of them and I want to try again this year. I want to have all four species. I think they are so exotic!