Friday, December 5, 2008

Blooming or Spiking

I told you guys a lot about my plants yesterday. Then I thought I should provide some evidence! :o) So I took some pictures of my blooming or spiking orchids this morning. All my moisture loving plants are in the dining room, on half of my big metal shelving unit. I sat them in watertrays, and mist them several times a day, and I put a humidifier next to them. Forgot to take a picture of the whole shelf, just individual plants. So far, I have one orchid in bloom, and 7 more spiking! They all spent the summer outside, and all the bulbs are super fat. Now they are using their stored energy sending out flowers. This is the happiest time for a gardener!

This is the pink oncidium in bloom. I devided the original pot to 3, and gave the other two to my friends. Now all three are blooming very nicely! These flowers are tiny, about 1", with curly pink petals and bright yellow center. Small but very delicate, and has very sweet scent.
Here are two of my dendrobiums. I got this first one this year, so haven't seen its flowers yet. But judge on the color of the buds, they are going to be purple. I had the second one for about two years, and this is the second time it's going to bloom. Its flowers are supposed to be very deep purple.
This one is my trustworthy yellow oncidium. It bloomed superbly for the last two years. It normally has more than 30 flowers, and every single one was huge, the big yellow lip look like a dancing lady's skirt. Very pretty.
This is my big Cymbidium. Last year, 3 out of 4 new bulbs bloomed. I was rewarded with 27 gigantic pink flowers, each one was bigger than my palm. Click here to see last season's pictures, it's the last picture in that post. This year, I only got two new bulbs, but they both spiking! It will take them 2 months to open, but it definitely worth the wait.
This one was from Hawaii. It loved my sunny deck during the summer, I got 2 spikes and 5 buds. But 4 buds dropped prematurely, so I only got one flower. When I originally got it, it had very elegant creamy white color flowers, but this summer's bloom was ORANGE! AK said it's normally, the flower color darken when it gets more sunshine, and it supposed to be orange in Hawaii. And later I found out the reason for the dropping buds. A whole bunch ants nested inside that pot! I had to flush it several times to force the ants to move out. I am hoping to see more flowers open this time around.
This is B. Little Stars. AK said it should be very beautiful white flower, and very hard to trigger the spiking. It grew several babies over the summer, but they are so small, so I didn't even think they can bloom. So, when I spotted it this morning, I was so happy, and very proud.
And last but not least, here is one of my Cat. The Lc. Little Marmaid "Janet". I didn't think I can handle Cat., but apperantly they love my sunny deck as well. I didn't think they are going to bloom for me, so I left them on the bottom most shelf, but they still get lots of sunshine. So, imagine how surprised I was when I saw the two small buds. Now they are quite big, about 1.5" long, and taking on color already, so I guess I can see their true color pretty soon.
I will take more pictures of the flowers later. And I already can see this is going to be another very colorful winter!

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