Another Dend.fimbriatum oculatum.
I have an old plant of this species - in an 8 inch pot - canes a metre high ( 3 ft 4 inch) . It is a problem to give it the conditions it wants to flower. I find that it needs a dryish but essentially cool rest for a few weeks - say 4 weeks, and then flowers well. It would be good to do this about now, or at least start it off by the end of the year, then maybe time the flowering right for my Society's Spring Show in late February. Since the flowers last only about 10days, that can be a little tricky , but a plant as big as this - flowering on the old leafless canes, which can continue flowering for several years, can have 20, 30 40 sprays of flowers,spread over more than a month and the first will have gone off before the last open - so that there is a window of about a month.
In a mild winter here - like '06 and '07 we had no frost at all - the lowest garden temperature was about 3 - 4 C - say 40 F - and I was able to leave the plant outside, and got good flowering. But the last two years we have had colder winters, and have another one coming up, by the look of things.
It's too warm in the greenhouse ( night minimum 17 C , say 65 F) and (now) too cold outside ; we are just having an unusually cold snap - for Southern England at this time - and the temperature at dawn today was minus 5 C. ( say 23 F ). I have a little lean-to greenhouse where I grow my tomatoes in the summer, and that doesn't get as cold because of the house, and I can put a tiny electric heater in there, running the cable out through a window left ajar , which would keep it to perhaps 5 deg. C above the outside temp., so that when we get to the end of this cold snap, I might risk it.
The pics of flowers are from February this year - when I managed to give the plant 3 weeks of cool rest in the preceding October/November, before the first forecast of really cold weather gave me a fright and I took it back inside.
These are such lovely plants that it is worth making some effort.
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