Consistently produces 5 or more long, pendulous spikes. Grown with lots of sun. It likes cool nights. This area is about as perfect as it gets for cymbidiums.

Another vigorous cymbidium - multiple arching spikes.

Cym. Blue River Thunder

The inense color of this Cymbidium has to be seen to be believed. It's a brilliant gold-bronze with subtle red veining. With the velvety red lip, it almost glows. It only put up one spike this year. But what a spike - 38 inches (96 cm) tall!

Cym. Tom Thumb

A prolific miniature, rich bronze flowers with a deep red, velvety lip, lots of flowers on pendulous spikes.

A soft cream with velvety burgundy lip.

Two wonderful parents make for big, rich red, round flowers.

This sunny miniature cymbidium blooms in late summer. It is wonderfully fragrant.

Cym. Yuri 'Red Velvet'

A very cute miniture. Flowers are only about 1 inch (2.5 cm), with a very nice star-shape and very dark, rich color. The whole plant is very small - great for people with limited growing area.

Magnificent color - rose blush over orange flower is reminiscent of a sunset.

Zygos are wonderfully fragrant - one can fill a house. They like slightly more shade than cymbidiums, but otherwise the same conditions . I grow mine in with the cymbidiums, which shade them because they are taller.

 One of the "reed stem" epidendrums. A non-stop bloomer, with many spikes 5 feet (150 cm) tall. It also produces keikis (baby plants) quite generously so that one can have even MORE of them. Bright light. These grow with the cymbidiums, but should receive balanced fertilizer like a cattleya.

Lots of arial roots and growth pattern of Epi. radicans, with color and subtle fragrance of roses from Soph coccinea.

Cute and colorful.

This flower is almost 3 inches (about 7 cm) on a plant that is only 5 inches (12 cm) tall. It flowers twice a year. The flower develops very quickly - two weeks ago there was no sign at all of a developing bud (the leaf was just opening.) Suddenly it bloomed. What a lovely surprise!The plant, like my other miniature Cattleya hybrids, is sheltered just a bit from the full western sun, but seems to do better with a lot of sun than it did in the shaded patio.

Native to southeast Asia, they are also known as the "ground orchid". Unlike most orchids, they are happy in well-drained soil. Cold weather? These don't care. Grow them like bulb plants. They die back to ground level in the winter, to send up new shoots and flowers in the spring. You can protect them from freezing by mulching.

A Dendrobium nobile type. These need to receive no food or water from approximately Nov. 1 to Feb. 1. During the spring and summer growing period they should get very little nitrogen. They reward this abuse with beautiful flowers in the spring. They need bright sun and cool winter nights.

This dendrobium loses its leaves in the winter, and needs to be kept dry. Then in the spring, it blooms with fragrant flowers all along the leafless cane. After that, a new cane grows, starting the cycle again.

Fragrant, compact, with lots of flowers.

Lots of flowers with the fragrance of wintergreen.

This is a "first bloom" baby. It had 7 spikes last year This year only 2. But it is typical for Den. speciosum to have so-so years between spectalular ones. I think I have a St. Bernard puppy here (little now, lots of potential for growth). For those who went to the Santa Barbara, California, showin 1998m and saw the magnificent Den. speciosum there (or saw the article on it in Orchids, the AOS magazine) you know what I mean. That one was about 9' (3 meters) across, weighing around 1000 pounds (454 kg), with 316 spikes, 100-250 flowers per spike. My little plant has a long way to go to reach that size, and I hope it doesn't get THAT big, since I live in a condo with very limited space. But fortunately, they grow slowly - it took the Santa Barbara plant about 27 years from first bloom to magnificence that it showed two years ago.