We hiked the Sawyer Camp Trail along Crystal Springs Lake in San Mateo in early June and spotted one coral root orchid that was still blooming. It’s very late and most of what we found was dried up already.

We also walked around the SF Botanical Garden a few weekends ago. They recently finished some path improvements and re-plantings and things look really good. I saw a blue poppy for the first time – very beautiful! The Epipactis Gigantea (stream orchid) was also in bloom in the California section of the garden, but I couldn’t get into a good position for a photo – plus, our camera’s been broken for awhile, so I’m limited to my camera phone which isn’t great for flower close-ups. (as you can tell below…)

Dendrobium Rigidum

P.S. I took this photo with my HTC Incredible Android phone — pretty decent quality considering the blooms are smaller than my pinky fingernail!

Back in the springtime, I started finding pests on some of our orchids. In particular, I found scale and mealy bugs. I could take photos to show you, but that’s time consuming and kind of depressing. I physically removed them when I spotted them during watering and/or wiped the affected areas with hydrogen peroxide. These methods ended up being totally insufficient. In the proceeding months, I kept finding pests on more and more of our orchids and continued removing them, but I didn’t use an insecticide. As a result, we lost many orchids, who were weakened by the pest invasion. Maybe three months ago I finally tried using insecticides to get rid of the pests. I guess it was too late for some of our orchids, because the pests continue to spread from plant to plant and more plants have died.

If I could do things over and time wasn’t an issue, I would immediately isolate the pest-ridden plants from the others and spray them with insecticide every few days or perhaps once a week until I could find no further sign of infestation. I think the main lesson is to be vigilant about eliminating pests as soon as they appear. I’m sharing my experience here because its both sad and expensive to lose your orchids.

Since we moved to a new flat a few months ago, most of our orchids seem happier. Quite a few are producing new growth and/or blooms after having laid low for awhile. They’re in our kitchen (again) but it is a little warmer and brighter than the last place. We’ve also lost a few of our orchids that were unfortunately overwhelmed by the extra sunlight. (still learning…)

The Dendrobium Palpabrae put out another spray recently, as well as our Schoenorchis Fragrans, and Gastrochilus Somai. Another orchid, the Nageliella Purpurea, almost bloomed… its been teasing us for years. It produces these skinny shoots from which flowers should emerge, but we’ve never seen any buds until now. We were excited to see a bud develop, but then it refused to open and dried up. It seems to appreciate the sunnier locale, but I don’t know what else we need to do for it!

We moved recently and the terrarium is in a window that gets a lot of indirect light – which appears to be a good thing! Since I’ve had the terrarium, I’ve changed the soil once (after removing the plants) when there was some kind of fungus on the top of the dirt. Otherwise, its been extremely low maintenance. I set it up the same way as my other terrariums: a layer of rock, thin layer of charcoal, and then soil on top of that. I take the lid off maybe once a week to air things out a bit and occasionally I add a little water if the soil seems dry. Previously, I kept the terrarium on my desk in two different offices and it did fine – just no blooms.

The Ascocentrum Christensonianum and Encyclia Lancifolia are more reliable annual bloomers.

Our orchids are currently in a crowded temporary setup while we modify our lighting and shelving system so that they can fit easily into our new kitchen. We still have several orchids that are developing buds, so I don’t think they’re too traumatized.

The cymbidium pictured below was purchased from Shelldance Orchids in Pacifica several years ago. At least a year ago, I decided to put it outside since it wasn’t thriving indoors. Plus, we see a lot of people around San Francisco successfully growing cymbidiums outdoors. So, it finally produced a spike full of blooms that probably opened six weeks ago and some are still going.

The paphiopedilum and maxillaria tenuifolia (?) are from a grower in San Luis Obispo that we visited around two years ago. Neither had bloomed since we got them so we were happy to see them flower again. We actually have a small maxillaria tenuifolium (pictured below) and a larger one and they both bloomed a few weeks apart, two flowers apiece. I particularly enjoy their coconut scent.

The dendrobium pugioniforme and pomatocalpa spicatum were Nathaniel’s purchases from this year’s POE. The pomatocalpa had three spikes when he bought it, but only one ended up producing flowers. Some small pest and perhaps a change in environment dried up the rest.

My husband and I usually buy a bunch of new orchids at the POE since it’s only once a year and there’s such a diverse collection of orchids for sale at reasonable prices. But since it currently takes about 90 minutes to water all of our orchids and we’ve seen a fair amount of  “attrition” lately, I decided to focus on caring for what we have. Nathaniel did purchase two new plants which I’ll show in an upcoming post.

The other winter bloomers are Dendrobium Mingle’s Sapphire which has two small clusters of blooms and Dendrobium Rigidum.