Buccella dynastes

Also and perhaps better known as Masdevallia dynastes, this small species is from Ecuador.  The plant is 10 cm tall and the flowers 2 cm.  The plant tends to have a climbing habit, but I grow it in a small net pot in live sphagnum moss.  It is supposed to be temperature tolerant, but I grow it with other cool-temperature species.  The oddly shaped and colored flowers are produced during the winter.

Sophrolaeliocattleya Circle of Life

This is one of the few hybrids I grow and one of the few Cattleyas I grow.  It's a hybrid of Laeliocattleya Culminant and the tiny red species, Sophronitis coccinea and due to the renaming of the species in its background would now be known simply as Cattleya Circle of Life.  It is a small plant as Cattleyas go, only 25 cm tall with 7-8 cm flowers, two per growth.  It blooms faithfully every spring and is one I raised from a very small seedling.

Dendrobium cyancocentrum

This is another tiny species from New Guinea, but it belongs to a different section than most of the New Guinea Dendrobiums I post.  This jewel is from section Calyptrochilus.  The plant is only 4 cm tall and the flowers are 1.5 cm.  There is a blue-flowered form of this species as well, but both have the blue "column" that gives the species its name.  I am flowering this for the first time and it has only a single flower, but I thought I'd post it anyway.

Masdevallia angulifera 'J & L' AM/AOS

Masdevallia angulifera is from Colombia and belongs to the Saltarices group of Masdevallias.  It has all the features of that group, colorful, tubular flowers lined with glandular hairs and a bulge at the base of the tube.  Like the other plants in the group it is small, 12 cm, with 2.5 cm flowers.  This clone is particularly dark and has been awarded by the American Orchid Society.

Dendrobium petiolatum

Dendrobium petiolatum is another species from the Oxyglossum section of that genus, one of my favorite groups of orchids.  It is one of the larger species in that section, though still small, and the flowers have all the characteristics of that section.  They are colorful, with a lip that is differently colored and accents the flowers beautifully.  The plant with its round pseudobulbs is 9 cm tall and the flowers, which come in clusters from the top of the older leafless pseudobulbs, are 2 cm.  The species is from New Guinea and this is the first time I've grown and bloomed it.

Note: Kevin, if you see this, I need your address.  I changed email servers and cannot find your address anywhere.  You can contact me at ronaldhhanko @ outlook.com (without the spaces).

Epicattleya Ernest Renan x Sophrocattleya Jungle Beau

I do not grow a lot of hybrid orchids and very few from the Cattleya alliance.  This is one of the few Cattleya relatives I still have, a plant I grew and flowered from a small seedling.  The hybrid is unnamed and the names I'm using here are not the most current, since the much of the Cattleya alliance has been reclassified.  Formerly this would have been known as a Stacyara, but it is not that any longer. The plant is 15 cm tall with 5 cm flowers, and they are nothing spectacular in my opinion.  The first two photos are from an earlier blooming and the rest from the present blooming.