The greenhouses are full of sobralias in spike and I am very excited. I really will try to blog more this season, as this will be a great year as more hybrids bloom. We have been quite busy, and international sales have been booming. And that is great. Species wise, my Costa Rica and Panamanian sobralias are all in spike with the undatacarinata and Sob. maduroi blooming after a year absence. Maybe they only bloom every two years? Or probably they were so weighted down with seed pods they just needed some time off. I tried everything with those flowers to get action, (soft talk, music, expensive dinners) and after getting a dozen pods on three plants, continued to woo them. I think that is when they found out I was married, they promptly dropped all their pods. All but for one, a Sobralia maduroi x sob. maduroi, ( I guess maduroi's do not care if one is married) Thank goodness for loose sobralias. The seed was great, and we will be deflasking them in the coming weeks. The plants are very small and very clean and are growing nicely.
Mother Nature did throw us a curve this winter however, as a few hundred plants were taken down by black ice weather at the nursery in Prunedale. This came as quite a surprise as these very same plants survived 26 degree weather for three days without a scratch, but the combination of water and ice proved too much. A couple of the new fimbriata hybrids actually died, but most just lost foliage. The field types came through with just some lost leaves, and have rebounded brilliantly. We learned much with this experience.
If we are lucky this season, we should bloom the first of the Sobralia rosea and Sobralia pulcherrima crosses. and the cross I am really anticipating, Sob. lancia x mirabilis, Do not ask how I did this, its a little embarrassing. No pictures please.
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