Early Birds and Night Owls

I’m an early bird.  At this time of year, the sky has just barely started to brighten as I emerge from BART to walk to work. Then, like a cruel trick, daylight savings steals even that bit of welcome light from me, and I have to wait again for the spring sun to rise earlier. George is a night owl. He’s ecstatic that he’ll have another hour of light in the evening. This is my blended photographic collage, for you night owls:

And this is my latest collage, with the same pocket watch photograph, for early birds like me.

Whichever you are, don’t forget to spring ahead tonight!

An Orchid Day in the Garden

Lots of George’s orchids are blooming madly right now. Here are three of my favorite wonders in the garden. First up, Mormodes tuxtlensis x sib. The saturated yellow glows in the morning and evening sunlight and it has a pleasant light scent.

Just beginning to open, several spikes of the Spiranthe Cernua orchid, also known as Nodding ladies’ tresses. George won a trophy for Best Species Orchid Flower a few years ago for the parent of this plant.

And finally, another yellow treasure: Oncidium Gower Ransey. This orchid has multiple flowers along the spike, and as they gracefully bob in the air it’s obvious why it’s known as the Dancing Lady Orchid. For this photo I focused on a single bloom.

What’s blooming in your garden?

Sobralia Orchids Galore

Much excitement in our garden this weekend, where the Sobralia orchids are finally blooming. Found throughout Central and South America, Sobralia are among the tallest orchids, and their flowers range in color from white through yellow, orange, pink, purple, and red. The flowers are notoriously short-lived and ephemeral, with some of them remaining open for only a few hours before withering.
This beauty opened yesterday and is already beginning to fade. The light purple flower is about 6 inches tall by 5 inches wide.
The yellow Sobralia bloomed this morning. The flower is about 3 inches tall by 4 inches wide.

Here’s the proud grower, who wanted me to let you know that San Francisco area orchid expert Bruce Rogers hybridized both of these orchids.

Orchid happiness

The Pacific Orchid Exposition in San Francisco (at Fort Mason this weekend) is the largest orchid show in the United States.  George and I have gone nearly every year since he started growing orchids. He also volunteers and, most years, he displays his orchids with one of the several local groups of which he is a member. This year he’s the president of the Diablo View Orchid Society (DVOS), so he’s showing at their display, which he and a few other people from the group put together.  Here he is in front of the booth.

Check out the glorious orchid at the right, it’s a Pleurothallis restrepioides ‘Dragonstone’ - one of George’s orchids that grows best outside, at least in our climate. It usually lives on our front porch – which is sadly empty while the orchid is at the show. In 2008 it won a “Best in show” and “Best in class”.  It has since been through a hail storm and snail attack, but this year it still won a second place ribbon.

There were so many amazing things to photograph, and almost as many photographers. It thinned out later in the day and I managed to get some photos that I liked. Composition can be difficult at these shows because a lot of the displays have the flowers jammed in. I look for a plain background. Here’s one:

I love ladyslipper orchids – they’re so ‘designerly’ with their lines and spots. This is one of my favorites.

George loves to preach the gospel of orchids and and let people know how to take care of them. We met a couple who flew out from back East just to see the show. They used to live near the town in Massachusetts where George grew up!

This is another one of my favorite orchids of George’s, a Scaphosepalum antenniferum. I like it because it’s kind of strange. The photo is a closeup, it grows on a long stalk, and this part of the flower is less than 2 inches across. I wrote a blog post about it last August.

One of the best displays at the Show was of pleurothallid orchids. I loved this one, another closeup – the widest part of the flower is less than half an inch.

Finally, another ladyslipper that George grew:

The show is open today, Saturday February 25th, from 9 to 6, and tomorrow from 10 to 5. If you missed the show, or live far away, look for a local orchid group – they often have shows or meetings where you can learn about growing these amazing flowers.

George’s winning Dracula orchid

I’m so proud of my orchid whisperer husband! George just won an Award of Merit (80 points) for this amazing orchid from the American Orchid Society at the San Francisco Orchid Society meeting.

It’s a Dracula amaliea ‘Hestia’.  This is a shot of just three of the blooms, the incredible plant has blooms nearly all the way around, I counted ten, and I’m sure there are some still hiding in the thick foliage! This same plant won a slightly lower award in 2009 – a Highly Commended Certificate, with a score of 78 points.  Click here to see the 2009 official AOS judging record and photographs.  I love the description they give: ”Two flowers and two buds on four inflorescences; sepals cream overlaid maroon on reverse appearing tan interiorly, heavily tomentose with tan-tipped glandular hairs; petals minute; caudae maroon, well presented; substance firm; texture felt-like.”

This is a photo I took of the entire plant in 2009.  The Dracula likes partial shade and cool to cold conditions, perfect for the weather we’ve been having.  And click here to see another of George’s award-winning Dracula orchids, a Dracula diabola ‘Andina’ which won an HCC (79 points) in 2010.

Big name, tiny flower

A wonderful new orchid just bloomed in George’s garden.

Scaphosepalum antenniferum orchid

Small  flowers, less than a half inch tall and wide, on a long stem, more than a foot high, and a long name: Scaphosepalum antenniferum. George is the first to admit that spelling is not one of his strong points, but he always gets these complicated orchid names right.  This is a closeup front view of one of the flowers.

And this is a side view.

Scaphosepalum antenniferum orchid

The name antenniferum is from the Latin antennifer, ”antenna-bearing”, referring to the appearance of the tails.

It’s a species orchid that’s native to South America, found in the cloud forest where it’s always cool — which may be why it’s so happy in El Cerrito this summer, where we’re having much lower than normal temperatures!

Vanilla orchids by George

Did you know that vanilla (the real kind, not imitation) comes from an orchid flower?

Vanilla orchid flower

My amazing husband George grows vanilla orchids, cultivates vanilla beans from the flowers, and makes extract from the beans! I’m going to track the steps, beginning with the orchid flowering, through pollination and cultivation of the beans.  I’ll add photos along the way, since the entire process takes more than a year (and you wondered why real vanilla costs so much) …

The vanilla orchid grows on a vine.  It helps to have a lot of space, but George set up a trellis, so the vine winds up and down and around.  Here’s a photo of George’s helper, Lars, watching the vanilla grow..

The first step of the process: the flower.

This is one of the flower buds, as yet unopened. You can see a drop of nectar – so sweet! I’m not sure what the purpose of the nectar is, some think it may be there to attract ants, which would protect the flower.

This is one of the flower spikes on the vanilla plant. There are five separate flower buds, unopened, on this one spike. There are at least four other flower spikes on the plant.  Finally, one of the flowers opened!

Unlike many other orchids which have flowers that can last for a month or more, each vanilla flower only blooms for one day.  If you want to cultivate the vanilla, you have to pollinate the flower before it fades.  The natural pollinator isn’t present in most places, so it’s usually necessary to hand-pollinate vanilla.  It’s not easy to do, but George has a really good success rate.  He takes a wooden stick and transfers pollen from one part of the flower to another (the anther to the stigma).

Hand pollinating the vanilla flower

This is the flower, immediately after pollination.  You can see the other unopened flower buds on the spike.

After a short time, the flower collapses.

Stay tuned for more … next, the flowers that were successfully pollinated will develop into beans ..  If you want to learn more, there’s a great wikipedia entry on vanilla.

Native Orchid Hike – Mount Tam

My husband is an orchid lover, and I get the benefit of his amazing green thumb and extensive knowledge by having so many beautiful and unusual orchids to admire and photograph.  He’s also an expert on native plants. The intersection of these two passions leads us to take a yearly hike around this time to Mount Tam, to find a few of the native orchids that bloom there in the springtime.  The first flower we found on our trek along the Matt Davis Trail was this  iris, though.  We’re not sure whether it’s a Douglas Iris or another species.

Iris

Our next sightings were almost simultaneous.  George saw a calypso orchid, also called “fairy slipper” not far along the trail.

Calypso orchid

I had walked a bit ahead, right by the calypso orchid — I missed it because the flowers are so small, their blooms being only about an inch.  If they weren’t so brightly colored, it would be easy to miss them completely.

Calypso orchid

Then I made my own discovery – right before he called out to me to come back to see it, I spotted a gorgeous coralroot orchid (Corallorhiza).

Coralroot orchid

The one on the right is in full bloom, and larger than most of the ones we saw here last year.  The flowering portion was about 3 to 4 inches.  These coralroots don’t produce chlorophyll, and have a symbiotic relationship with fungi to survive.  Here’s a closer look at the bloom, with a little bug resting on it:

Coral root

This is a spotted coralroot (Corallorhiza Maculata) - you can see the little spots on the flower.  Most of the coralroots we saw on our hike were like these.  Here’s a stand of them that hadn’t bloomed yet.  They were far off the path and I didn’t want to disturb the hillside, so I couldn’t get too close.

Coral root stand

We climbed up one side-path and found a wonderful stand of calypso orchids.  We had seen many lone calypsos scattered along on both sides of the trail, but this grouping was unusual.  George said they probably bloomed in this same spot over many years.

Stand of calypso orchids

George’s next coup was to find another species of coralroot!  This is a striped coralroot (Corallorhiza striata).  He took this photograph because I didn’t want to climb up the hill to get a close shot.

Striped coral root

We also saw a wonderful tall stand of fritillaries, but they were on the down-hill side of the path and in a place even George wouldn’t climb to get a photograph.

Fritillary

Okay, I had to include a photograph — I took this one of a fritillary blooming near the same location two years ago.

It was a very successful trek. We laughed about the robust youngsters zooming past us on the trail, missing the amazing native orchids and other treasures just off the path.  We were also happy to meet some wonderful people who were extremely interested in our finds, and who shared with us their knowledge about bird calls and other plants.  We have some of the GPS coordinates for the orchids, email me if you want to know them.