Barbosella australis

Barbosella australis is a tiny creeping species with paddle-shaped leaves and large flowers in proportion to the size of the plant.  The leaves are 1.5 cm and the flowers 2 cm.  It blooms for me in the autumn and is easy to grow, always blooming with an abundance of flowers.  The name, australis, refers not to the country of origin - it is from Brazil - but to the fact that it comes from the southern parts of that country.  The flowers are not very showy but are unusually shaped and colored and the genus is related to Masdevallia and Pleurothallis.

Barbosella cogniauxiana

This species is a micro-miniature.  It grows as a mat of oval leaves that are only 1.5cm, with flower spikes of 5 cm and single 3 cm flowers.  The plant is temperature tolerant and easy to grow and can produce a mass of flowers that almost completely hide the plant itself.  It is best grown mounted and mine is on a small piece of branch, where it tends to ramble.  It is related to Pleurothallis and belongs to a small group of species from Central and South America, in this case from Brazil.

Barbosella australis

Barbosella australis is a tiny creeping species with paddle-shaped leaves and large flowers in proportion to the size of the plant.  The leaves are 1.5 cm and the flowers 2 cm.  It always blooms for me in autumn and is from southern Brazil (hence the name australis).  The flowers are not very showy but are unusually shaped and colored and the genus is related to Masdevallia and Pleurothallis.

Barbosella australis

It must be Barbosella season since all of my species have been in bloom recently including this species.  Barbosella australis is a rather common miniature orchid species from Brazil (the name "australis" means "southern").  It should be grown on a mount and forms a creeping mat of small 1.5 cm leaves and produces flowers that larger than the leaves, about 2 cm long.  It is related to Pleurothallis and Masdevallia, a Pleurothallid.

Barbosella cucullata

I've posted this species before, but last time it bloomed it had only two flowers.  It did much better this fall.  The species has thick, channeled leaves 5 cm long and 4 cm flowers on 15 cm spikes.  It is from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela and is related to Masdevallia and Pleurothallis.  I grow it in live sphagnum and try to keep it slightly dry which it seems to prefer.  I've found, too, that the flowers are not very long-lasting.

Barbosella cogniauxiana

A Brazilian species, this orchid is really tiny, growing as a mat of oval leaves that are only 1.5cm, with flower spikes of 5cm and single 3cm flowers.  The plant is temperature tolerant and easy to grow and can produce a mass of flowers that almost completely hide the plant itself.  It is best grown mounted, and my plant, rather recently acquired is glowing on a piece of a branch.  It is related to Pleurothallis and belongs to a small group of species from Central and South America.

Barbosella cucullata

Barbosella cucullata is another species from Ecuador, but also from Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.  It is also another Pleurothallid, related to Masdevallia. Many of the species in this genus are very small, but this one is a bit larger with thick, channeled leaves about 5 cm tall, long, erect flower spikes (15 cm), and single flowers 4 cm in size.  In nature it is a lithophyte, growing on moss-covered rocks, and in cultivation seems to like a thick pad of moss as well.  I grow it in a small pot in which the live moss has formed a thick pad well above the top of the pot and there it thrives, partly buried in the moss.

Barbosella australis

Barbosella australis is a rather common miniature orchid species from Brazil (the name "australis" means "southern").  It should be grown on a mount and forms a creeping mat of small 1.5 cm leaves and produces flowers that larger than the leaves, about 2 cm long.  I received this plant as Barbosella cogniauxiana from a vendor who ought to know better and was a bit annoyed to find that it was not correctly identified, though the flowers are beautiful in their own right.