The cool house Cymbidiums have excelled themselves this year, with eight species in flower at the moment. One plant has upward of 40 inflorescences. I was working on a crack in the drainage system over the weekend and so spent much of the day closeted with them. What was striking was the sequence of odours which they produced. One got a musty smell from the C. traceyanums at about 10.00, which was gone by 11.00, with the C. iridioides coming in with a sourly sweet scent just afterwards. At midday the C. erythraeum lot fired up and the afternoon belonged to the C. elegans. I do not know if each species reacts to the time of day, light or just the density of swearing when I got my power drill stuck down the drain, but the sequential nature of their output was very striking. _____________________________________ Oliver Sparrow Tel: UK (0)20 7736 9716 www.chforum.org www.treknepal.org www.trekperu.org www.datafreeze.com
_______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
