So Brexit put a real spammer in the works when buying mainly cattleyas from outside the UK. The paperwork now needed to import plants is enormous.
Things are slowly starting to improve, with some eBay sellers and the company ‘spiceotics’ selling small/seedling cattleyas, mostly grown in small plastic pots in sphagnum. Nothing like pre-Brexit, but still, better than nothing.
Most plants that are available are modern South East Asian hybrids. If you’re a species buff, then there is very little around.
In 2023, the only thing I found was a seedling cattleya dowiana, not a bad find. When it arrived, I realised it was a potful of seedlings, growing together.
It’s proved to be a very vigorous grower and there it’s clear now that there are four plants. They’re so close together that I haven’t split them yet, even after a repot. I just dropped the root mass into a larger pot and added bark to the existing sphagnum.
It would have caused too much root damage as the individual plants were on different growing and rooting cycles.
I may see flowers in a couple of years.
This next photo shows this week’s find.
Front left is a pot of four seedlings of cattleya eldorado concolor x alba. Hopefully it will develop as quickly as the dowiana seedlings. Back right is Cattleya lueddemanniana semi alba, not a colour form of this species I’ve grown. I’m not sure that this is even a seedling. The oldest pseudobulb is the largest. On the front right is Cattleya triumphans, still a tiny seedling with pseudobulbs only 1cm high. Still, if it’s correct, it’s the first time I’ve seen this offered on this side of the Atlantic.
The seedlings appear to enjoy the warmer conditions in the grow room, so fingers crossed that in a few years, the labels prove correct and there will be some lovely blooms.
Things are slowly starting to improve, with some eBay sellers and the company ‘spiceotics’ selling small/seedling cattleyas, mostly grown in small plastic pots in sphagnum. Nothing like pre-Brexit, but still, better than nothing.
Most plants that are available are modern South East Asian hybrids. If you’re a species buff, then there is very little around.
In 2023, the only thing I found was a seedling cattleya dowiana, not a bad find. When it arrived, I realised it was a potful of seedlings, growing together.
It’s proved to be a very vigorous grower and there it’s clear now that there are four plants. They’re so close together that I haven’t split them yet, even after a repot. I just dropped the root mass into a larger pot and added bark to the existing sphagnum.
It would have caused too much root damage as the individual plants were on different growing and rooting cycles.
I may see flowers in a couple of years.
This next photo shows this week’s find.
Front left is a pot of four seedlings of cattleya eldorado concolor x alba. Hopefully it will develop as quickly as the dowiana seedlings. Back right is Cattleya lueddemanniana semi alba, not a colour form of this species I’ve grown. I’m not sure that this is even a seedling. The oldest pseudobulb is the largest. On the front right is Cattleya triumphans, still a tiny seedling with pseudobulbs only 1cm high. Still, if it’s correct, it’s the first time I’ve seen this offered on this side of the Atlantic.
The seedlings appear to enjoy the warmer conditions in the grow room, so fingers crossed that in a few years, the labels prove correct and there will be some lovely blooms.
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