My membership at Marie Selby Botanical Garden gives me a choice of two "free" plants as a member appreciation gift each year in November. This year they are offering four orchids. Two of them are Cattleyas - Atalanta 'Hawaii' and Summer Spot which I know I can grow, and are nice but sort of boring. The other two are Psychopsis Mendenhall 'Hildos' which has an orange/yellow flower , and Trigonidium egertonianum, a little one with odd-shaped flowers that I am intrigued with.
I know Jim has success with Psychopsis, but he has controlled conditions in his OC. My orchids are all growing outdoors here so I'm wondering if I would be able to give a Psychopsis the conditions it needs. I do protect everybody if the weather gets cold in winter, and most of the year the conditions are excellent for orchids - moderate humidity, moderate temps - but summer is a challenge to regulate water at times. I've had a couple of losses to black fungal disease this summer.
Please give me your opinions on whether to go for it with the Psychopsis and the Trigonidium, or play it safe and take the two Catts? To be honest, the plants they give away are extremely small, at least 2 or 3 years away from blooming, so I'll have years of work to grow them to blooming size no matter which ones I bring home.
Here are the two babies I got last year. Cattleya dowiana, and Cattlianthe Chocolate Drop 'Kodama' Those are 2in. pots and each has put on a couple of new leaves since last November . . .
