Showing posts with label stanhopea tigrina orchid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stanhopea tigrina orchid. Show all posts

Friday, January 2, 2009

Stanhopea Tigrina orchid

Yesterday morning my Stanhopea Tigrina opened up its flowers and as usual presented its beautiful majestic flowers in its full glory. It took only a few minutes for it to unfold from the tight flower bud to this unusual and delightful strongly vanilla/ chocolate scented marvel.

Stanhopea Tigrina native to Mexico's mountain regions and been popular with orchid collectors since its discovery by english explorers in 1800's.

These orchids are not hard to grow but they do have their specific requirements - they have to grow in an open planters so that they can send their flowering spikes through the bottom of the planter. They need shady situation and copious amount of watering during growing time with drier conditions in winter and they prefer warmth, humidity and a lot of air movement.

Stanhopea flowers stay open on the plant only for a short time - 3 or 4 days only and every year in early summer its a waiting game to see if I get any flower spikes on my plant since stanhopea's flowering can be effected by many factors such as unusually cold winter temperatures or low humidity. This year my plant developed a few flower spikes and I am looking forward seeing extended flowering period. More pictures further down the page.

How does one describe stanhopea orchids - rare, unusual, spectacular, fascinating, amazing, astonishing, majestic, beautiful, temperamental, frustrating, capricious, and if you prepared to wait about 360 days to see the magic, they will not disapoint you.