On 06/12/2014 08:44, Jeff Layman wrote:
On 05/12/2014 17:17, Spider wrote:

Enjoy your new Cymb. and the others you mentioned.
I've got oodles of Phals. and Cambria types in bloom, plus a couple of
Paphiopedilums coming on. Lovely.

This might have been better in the other thread on this subject.



You may be right, but I couldn't - and still can't - see another thread
on orchids. What was it called? I'm wondering if I didn't get it. The
last orchid-related thread I've found was the McBeans one.


A few years ago we went to the RHS orchid show. My wife bought me a
rather expensive very dark-flowered Paph which was had a nice fat bud on
it. What was particularly intriguing was that the flower stem was
almost black and quite hairy, very similar to the Black Kangaroo Paw -
one of my favourite plants. It was in one of those transparent plastic
pots. I put it in the greenhouse and after a few weeks the flower
opened. It wasn't in the best position for a photo, so I put it on a
shelf where it was better lit, and the background wasn't intrusive. Just
as I clicked the camera button the orchid tipped over in slow motion and
fell off the shelf! Of course the flower broke off (I kept it in water
for a few weeks). I had completely missed that as the bud had grown 30
cm upwards and the flower had expanded, it had made the whole thing
top-heavy.

The rest is history, and the lesson was well learned...



Quite. I'm obviously still learning: I dropped a Catteleya earlier
whilst cleaning, and snapped a small flowering spur branch off a Phal.
The Catt. appears unharmed and, fortunately, the Phal. has lots of other
flowers, so it hardly shows.
--
Spider.
On high ground in SE London
gardening on heavy clay