Schomburgkia (laelia) undulata and More orchids in the wild
I have been going through a lot of old slides, scanning some to digitise, primarily looking for ones to use in a lecture I am giving in a couple of months, and came across several which I thought would be of interest.
The football sized head of dark flowers is i think Schomburgkia (laelia) undulata ? which came from somewhere in the Andes , using Merida as a base.That was when I fell in love with Schombos !
The other one, which is several wild collected plants tied to a post , was outside a bar somewhere on the Pan-american highway in Costa Rica. My spanish is not so good, and their English was non-existent, and I did not get very far about finding out where they came from - apart from "up in the forest" with a thumb jerked in the general direction of up-hill. I never got to ordering the beer, between taking pics and asking questions, as my wife was getting anxious about the bus leaving without us....
It took me several years, thinking about it from time-to-time and ocasionally showing pics to people, to work out what it is - Laelia rubescens - the point being that the bulbs are oncidium like, and the flowers - well, you tell me - not particularly Laelia like ! It was called one of the "anamolous Laelias" meaning that it was about 3 thousand miles from the next laelia species -( and logically, for that reason, is scarcely likely to be a laelia at all ) subsequently has been moved elsewhere (?) perhaps to Encyclia (?) although IOSPE - showing photos of flowers a little dissimilar to mine, still has it as a laelia.
I'd love to go back and offer bags of gold for one of those plants, but I should have to drive the whole way along the Highway ( which not be any hardship from the orchid point of view ! ) to find the place again. I doubt if that will happen for many reasons, one of which is that it is becoming quite difficult to get a rental car, once my age is disclosed. However, I do now hav a small seedling looking quite healthy, so maybe I'll see the flowers again one day.
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