Hello Zoe P here. I thought you would like to see a close of the snowman's orchid, Dendrobium fimbriata. In the wild it grows at altitude of about 300-500m so a lot lower than the snow line. It is called fimbriata because of the delicate feathery edge to the lip.

 Did not spend long in the snow if anyone is worried.

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 Hello, we appologise for not writing blogs because we could not make it to school because of the snow! Now we are back at school we are working very hard, building a snow man! If you look carefully you can see the snowman holding Dendrobium Fimbriatum. The Dendrobium found it to cold so we then moved the snowman inside and now he has gone and left the plant on the floor!

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 Last night was officially the coldest in the history of the orchid project. Temperatures in the cool end went down to 1 degree above freezing (we aim to maintain a minumum of 7 degrees here). By 9 am the temperature was at around 2 or 3 degrees as shown in this photograph while it was still -10 outside. The orchid in the photo is Masdevallia picea from the mountains of Peru and Ecuador and so can cope with lower temperatures but this is a bit extreme and we wouldn't recomend you putting your thermostat on 3 degrees. We have found that cool growing orchids such as Masdevallias, Coelogynes, Dendrobiums and Cymbidiums can cope happily with the odd short period of very low temperatures providing frost is avoided but other warm growing orchids such as Phalaenopsis, Vandas and Aerangis do not survive or at least lose a lot of leaves so it is important to match your plants to your conditions. When really cold weather is forcast we avoid watering plants as dry plants are not so suceptable to rots and fungal attack, it is nearly a week since we last watered at Writhlington. As tonight is forcast cold again you will be pleased to know we have arranged temporary top up heating to keep everything a little more cosy while the big freeze continues.

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 With all the snow around there's not much to do in the gardern exept have fun.  This patch of snow by the greenhouse was just asking for a snow angel, or two. p.s. Luke and I were a bit freezy afterwards though.

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 It is very snowy today and the school is closed, but the greenhouse doesnt water itself, so whatever the wether we are in school (me and Luke in the pic).  All the plants are fine all snug in the greenhoues, so it gives a chance to do some work in the lab. Good luck coping with the snow. Zoe B. 

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 Spring is the best time of year to repot and split orchids and at Writhlington spring starts early. One plant that needed drastic attention was this old plant of Odontoglossum cristatum. A lovely cool growing species from Colombia. It has been growing on the same piece of cork bark for about seven years and it is now in need of splitting up and repotting for a fresh start. The first step is to sterilse a pair of secateurs by flaming them. This stops the spread of virus disease. New the plant is cut into parts each with at least three healthy pseudobulbs.

 This is one new plant here. Read More...

 New year is a time we think about all the lovely people we work with around the world. So Happy New Year to our friends in Durban both at the Botanic Garden and at West Park School. Happy New Year as well  to the pupils and staff at the Erica Primary School in Cape Town, to Souk and Eddie in Laos, to John, Ian and Judy in Belize, to Ana-Silvia and Federico in Guatemala, to Federico, Vannessa, Franco, Kerry and Bob in Costa Rica, to Izabel, David and Carlhinos in Brazil and all our friends in Sikkim, especially Mohan and Ganden who are second and fifth from the left in this lovely photo from our 2009 expedition to Sikkim. This is the log house at the Fambong Lho reserve in the mountains above Gangtok. Finally a Happy New year to all of you who read our blogs on the RHS. We hope to see you all sometime in 2010...Simon Pugh-Jones

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