What orchids are in bloom this late winter-!

Well hello plant lovers it is Matthew in Melbourne welcoming you to my orchid channel. Here I humbly try to grow cold cool intermediate orchids here in Melbourne Australia without any help really from knowing that much or from the greenhouse or heating or humidifiers or grow lights really just me and them struggling along in my outside conditions for better or for worse. So plant lovers of the world if that sounds like your no-nonsense conditions hit subscribe because feel free to leave your questions and comments I really do not know much but I can certainly help and maybe these videos will help your orchid channel which today is really just about what's in bloom or still in bloom as the case may be because it is I'm filming this late winter it's been a long hard slog I mean cold but relatively speaking for Melbourne which doesn't get below zero 32 Fahrenheit we rarely get below five centigrade in the city here but yeah it's just been chilly and wet and long Melbourne's winter is always back on so suddenly to be surrounded with orchids and color and fragrance ah it's just delightful. So plant lovers I thought you know what let me just gather all these floral delights together and have a quick whiz around what's in bloom for me this late winter. It's an interesting time because a lot of things are going over that were winter flowers and then a lot of the late winter early spring things are just coming in and then the spring things are still in their sort of nibby flower spiky state but there's still an awful lot going on so let us just start with the big one. Yes my Zygopetalum maculatum still in bloom let me just spin that towards you a little bit more look at that and the fragrance filling the room oh it's the most gorgeous hyacinthy smell it's the most delicious orchid now I made a video about this oh a couple of maybe a month ago now actually when it first came into bloom just saying what a great season it is for me best ever three spikes absolutely stunning but I'm just here to say plant lovers still looking sensational and still fragrant all these weeks later and it's outside for me it's actually near the green bin so funnily enough whenever I go and put things in the bin it's in the courtyard and the whole courtyard really does smell of this orchid beautiful light hyacinth note delicious now I did fail spectacularly for years with zygos but this one I found the sweet spot and I'll show you the leaves all the new leaf growth green and spotless you'll be pleased to see all the old leaves you'll see black and spotted largely that's to do with air movement and moisture and cold cold and wet and still air equals the necrotic sort of fungally attack to the leaves but if you keep up the airflow and you try and keep the leaves dry-ish in winter then your leaves are going to look amazing which is what everyone says and they are right but I'm thrilled with this and what I will come and show you is that you can really see now how the flowering is initiated in zygos which is quite interesting when the new growth starts to emerge the flower comes with it and I'll show you you can see quite specifically that the shoots the new growth are only about so big and that's where the flower spike bees have come from so the flowers mature and finish before the growth matures which is not that common generally an orchid produces a new growth that matures in the following year that mature growth will flower but not in the case of zygos so cool climate orchids they do like a cool winter and this one flowers for me well sometimes you can flower in autumn and sometimes in winter this one flowered in winter and we're just heading towards the end of winter but what a glorious flower and I'm so thrilled I think I've got the right spot and I've figured this out what a glorious orchid originally came from facebook marketplace but maculatum is a very common orchid to find known by two other names which escape me for the minute intermedium I think is one and something else maclei that's right ends in double i all the same thing but they come from a fairly wide range they're just all forms of the same species anyway glorious orchid zygos still in bloom very happy let's see how I go next one sidebar for that when I repotted this which I did probably a year ago now no not quite a year ago and I made a video about it I took off a few of the old back bulbs because there was a lot of growth there and I thought oh you know I made my film with Mariana from White nurseries and she does a lot of back bulb publications zygopetalums and cymbidiums and I thought well there you go let me give it a good as you go and look there's our growth I've kept this on the drier side not dry out completely but keeping it fairly moist and that growth is really coming along well be interested to see how long it takes for the plant that appears from this back bulb to flower who knows how long it'll take but I kind of don't care I'm growing this on for a friend of mine who's just setting up an orchid space in Melbourne so it'll be a great plant for her interestingly enough I think great companion plant for zygopetalum is celogenin and look at this one what a glorious plant there we go look at that flower they always seem so daffodil like me and they often smell like daffodils or jungles beautiful beautiful and there we have our second so celogenins um kind of depends but there are cool climate ones and warm and really tropical ones the cool climate ones tend to be from a quite a wide range of the Himalaya all the way across into southern China and they do really well for me so sort of high altitude mountains absolutely beautiful now this one is a hybrid and it's called celogenin kiribilli is a very grand part of Sydney where the prime minister lives when they're in town and this is a cross between Moriana and Assamica and Moriana is a Vietnamese I think species and Assamica guess where that comes from yes Assam but also countries either side to the north eastern uh Himalaya so this does stretch across into Vietnam as well so generally that Himalayan strip has a lot of celogenin species to me and the hybrids thereof all tend to be white with a gold lid anyway I kind of don't care I've got about three little basically the same but they are stunning this was a new purchase for me and honestly looking at it I mean stunning but it does look really like everything else I have uh although the flower so yeah there is a slight difference but it's like that scene in Devil Wears Prada with the two turquoise jumpers yeah celogenin look the same but I adore them and companion plants yes if you can grow zygos you should be able to grow celogenin because this would hang above where a zygo wants to be the zygos like bright and direct light they can take a bit of morning dappled direct sunlight depending where you are in the world and then protection dappled light celogenins once again they were an under storage plant so brightish indirect light slightly more in winter because they often come from semi deciduous forests so they will get more light in winter but not a bright light so if you can get either of these to flower than the other one could do equally as well in the same spot whereas celogenins want to be slightly more elevated because they're very much notified zygopedalums are very much the terrestrial so and I have celogenin playlists I've got lots of them but this is first time blooming for me still in its plastic pot which is terrible but never mind I will repot that in spring and maybe I'll do that physically. The orchid I just moved to show us the celogenin is this look at that and this is Miltassia although now called Brattonia I think Miltassia lavender kiss lavender taffy now I made a video again months ago about my mother plant and I repotted it and it's going to need some work again so again in spring watch this space and a bit of it came off in my hand your honor literally so I just shoved it in a little terracotta pot and ta-da-ta-da it pinged out a growth and that growth of flower now the mother plant the flowers have been gone on that for weeks and weeks in fact I just cut off the very dead whereas this one which is genetically the same is flowering a little later and what a beauty it is and this ah is going to be for the same friend that the cytopetalum is going to be so she has just um sort of building or built an orchid enclosure in her house in in Melbourne not dissimilar or quite similar same climate as me and I have actually made a series of videos while she's doing it so when it's finished which hopefully will be soon I'll make the final video and I can show you what she's done because it's a courtyard small courtyard garden in the inner city but I've been collecting things that are going to be fairly tough and great for her climate outside and this is certainly one of the Miltassia or Brattonia lavender kiss lavender taffy a very easy um hybrid to find I think but glorious flowers again cool climate though happy as Larry outside for me needs bright indirect sunlight not too much direct sun because the leaves will get affected but very easy to propagate next up I'm going to lean back is this fantastic but yeah no fragrance but this is my dendrobium uralis which I've had for years this is one of the first orchids I bought and it lived on a balcony for me in the city when I was living in the city center now it's in this large basket and it is covered in flowers and it's covered in buds it's going to be a great year for it unfortunately they've decided not to all come out at once which would then just be a cloud of the beautiful flowers but it's nice I'm getting blotches of color throughout the weeks actually and it's been in bloom really for about a month so late winter and it will continue flowering well into spring so gorgeous thing and Uralis is a hybrid between Nabila and Heterocartum and it was created in the late 19th century in the 1890s so an old hybrid but if you can grow again um Nobili type soft cane dendrobiums then this is a great one to find quite an old hybrid so I don't know I've never actually seen it anywhere else I bought this on eBay a million years ago and I will certainly be propagating this because it's a tangle of a plant but I love the fact that it's now such a great specimen and it's covered in flowers so what I do really try to do with that is keep it really on the dry side throughout autumn so heavily watered throughout spring and summer and in autumn I let it dry out quite a lot to give it a little bit of a rest splash cool period and the flower buds start to form and then winter I start to water it a little bit more but then when spring comes really ramp it up again so that's sort of the cycle that I try to stick to with dendrobium Nobili types a couple a month six weeks eight weeks of fairly dryish conditions in autumn and then increasing the water a little bit in winter and then back to normal spring and summer through to autumn when the weather changes but it is delicious and it's great that it's one of the first orchids I ever had and I really knew nothing about caring for it and it survived me and now it's a really happy specimen and really as we said companion plants so dendrobium Nobili could easily hang above any of these if it's getting a bit more direct light so again dusty bright indirect light is to trigger the flowers so particularly in autumn as we are getting into the flower triggering time when it blooms winter late winter but companion plants phylogeny phytocephalum cymbidium so this fantastic cymbidium above me is a pendant one that I bought on facebook marketplace a few years ago and I've made quite a few videos about my cymbidium so I have species ones and there's a group of species ones that flower in autumn then hybrids derived from those can flower from late autumn into winter you then have some winter flowering ones and then a lot of the hybrid ones start to bloom late winter early spring so right now I'm kind of in the middle so a lot of my early ones you could say the ones that bloom in late autumn and winter are going over and then all my spring flowering hybrids particularly are bursting forth and I've got about three or four plants but the spikes are probably still a few weeks away from actually opening so I'll do another video with those but they're magnificent parts including my mother-in-law's rescue plant which I've made a video about and cousin joss's plant which I made a video about rescuing that and a couple of other no id ones which I bought from facebook marketplace so those are coming this one has been in bloom now for well over a month but the flowers are still looking fantastic and I'm going to go over soon but not giving any sign of doing that but all basically want similar care just slightly different positions so this wants to be higher this wants to be lower and the cymbidium slightly higher than this the cymbidiums these cool climate ones tend to be growing in dappled light in forests and understory plant towards the base of trees and often semi-deciduous again more like in winter but bright indirect light again all of these plants need cool winter conditions to really keep the plant healthy and to stimulate flowering but that is a beauty no idea though a couple of people have suggested what it might be I bought it as an anonymous plant on facebook marketplace but I love it I love the color I love the form three spikes this year one and a half because I snapped the end of one up which can happen with zygos as well it's like asparagus very snappy so do be careful but anyway cymbidiums the first batch kind of going over waiting for the next batch to come along but a great great orchid as you well know all right and next in bloom which is just a sample of it really is Australian dendrodium now I have got tons of these and I made a video last week about them all ah so these the ones that are in bloom for me now are mostly the quinianum type so hybrids or species of where there's mostly quinianum in the industry so I do have a lot of a lot of Australian dendrodium orchids and um the ones that have speciosum in the blood line tend to flower a little bit later for me so these ones are always the first ever look at those canes aren't they wonderful often fragrant super tough orchids I won't go too much into this because we did last week and I have a but look how wonderful they are all together I love this one this one is a hybrid called aussie victory and what a beauty it is victory and vitreous and then the last plant that's still in bloom which is a bit of a cheat because I didn't make this well I bought it in bloom but I just want to show you the longevity of the flowers look at that yes this is the pathia pedulum villosum and I made an oops I did it again um orchid haul video because I wanted to get pathia pedulum insignia and because it does really well on my climate outside as an outside plant and I just couldn't find it and then I was at a fair and I saw this which is um villosum and it comes from a similar um geographic area or one of them is more isolated than the other but similar neck of the woods anyway and likes very similar conditions so it's a high altitude grower so it can take cool temperatures and loves Melbourne so there we go I bought this a long time ago now six weeks more I don't know look those flowers still look perky and beautiful weeks and weeks and weeks later so I'm really thrilled with this and it's been outside I haven't repotted it yet I will do that in spring but it is certainly going to be a fantastic plant and my aim for this is just to bulk it up obviously and get a beautiful big pot full of different crowns so I can get multiple flowers and I mean it's already got two spikes because it has two crowns two growing fans and there is a new growth just emerging here but I'd love another new growth on the other side so we can keep the tradition of multiple blooming anyway that is still doing really well and we've had we've been in the depths of our winter conditions and it's obviously thriving so there's going to be no issue with it getting through winter so there we go Paphiopedilum villosum still in flower even though I had nothing to do with it passing by so there we are plant lovers what is in bloom this winter well quite a lot and beautiful and there's fragrance it's absolutely delicious I'm thrilled now a couple people asked last week week before my little finger yes it is bright purple that is a bruise of the nail I had a heart attack a couple of months ago and I'm on lots of blood thinners now and you bruise like that this was actually caused by using secateurs a bit of pressure on the nail there you go anyway I am not supporting a goth fingernail I'm injured plant lovers injured but doing it for a great cause anyway there we go there is what's in bloom isn't it gorgeous a lot of these things can live harmoniously together as in winter so similar-ish conditions but there's or individual videos if you're interested loving that and I am loving the fact that next week I have no idea what the video will be if you want to know hit subscribe I post every weekend of Friday amateur ramblings might help you on your journey so do come along and join me so where you are I hope all's well that you're all things are treating you well that life is treating you well and I look forward to seeing you