M
Mahon
Guest
[edited due to "offensiveness", sorry] ...a few years ago (or something), I went to the Commonwealth of Dominica (not to be confuse with the Domincan Republic)... this is a very beautiful place, also has black beaches... the great thing about this country is that it hasn't been fully searched for orchids, just skimmed alongside the main road...
Unlike EC, this place is a rather new place, and island formed not too long ago... there are 365 freshwater rivers (when it rains, they are rapids everywhere!), and there is plenty of fruit and food in the rainforest to keep a person camping alive... I went into about 4 parts of the rainforest, and I started finding new records (possibly new species) everywhere... I found many types of Stanhopea relatives, Pleurothallids, terrestrial orchids, Prosthechea plants that bloomed with pods that were about 2cm tall (a new record), and all kinds of things in just a little bit... I found my new species Pleurothallis on someone's Orange tree, the rhizome is very long, and the distance between a bulb on this rhizome was about 6 inches... Dr. Luer never heard of such! There are thousands (if not more than that!) of blooming naturalized Spathoglottis plicata around the island, some of them grow in the trees, on tree ferns (the ones that are tall like a tree), and these plants are the biggest I have ever seen, the flowers as large as Phalaenopsis (note that on Troy Meyers site, the unknown genus and species flask of a pink flowering orchid, the pod collected in Dominca, 'the flower is like a Phalaenopsis', these flowers are huge!)...
Ok, so I have been to this place for ONLY a few hours, and look at all I found, I saw Epi. nocturnum on a dead tree, found a new species of Erythrodes, some Koellensteinia looking orchids (unsure what they were), a few Anthuriums (these aren't the showy ones, I saw a few on the side of a cliff, and they were quite large with green and black spathed flowers), many Gingers, lots of Heliconia, and Bananas everywhere! It was raining, and I had a time limit, so I had to run the entire way through the rainforest... the people I met knew a few orchid locations, but because of a few hours time, I had to decline the offer to go see them... there are also Vanilla planifolia (these people use Vanilla all the time) and one native told me he knew of a green flowered Vanilla... assuming to be V. beyrichii or V. mexicana... they also have lots of Cocoa plants, and lost of this aquatic plant, that the roots are edible...
But there are also other things there, like boating, rafting, etc... there is a Botanical Gardens there, but because of time, we passed right by...
[edited due to "offensiveness", sorry]...let me know if this sounds feasible (even if u all like to go to EC anyways, maybe an alternative trip or a second trip, etc...)
-P.A. Mahon
Unlike EC, this place is a rather new place, and island formed not too long ago... there are 365 freshwater rivers (when it rains, they are rapids everywhere!), and there is plenty of fruit and food in the rainforest to keep a person camping alive... I went into about 4 parts of the rainforest, and I started finding new records (possibly new species) everywhere... I found many types of Stanhopea relatives, Pleurothallids, terrestrial orchids, Prosthechea plants that bloomed with pods that were about 2cm tall (a new record), and all kinds of things in just a little bit... I found my new species Pleurothallis on someone's Orange tree, the rhizome is very long, and the distance between a bulb on this rhizome was about 6 inches... Dr. Luer never heard of such! There are thousands (if not more than that!) of blooming naturalized Spathoglottis plicata around the island, some of them grow in the trees, on tree ferns (the ones that are tall like a tree), and these plants are the biggest I have ever seen, the flowers as large as Phalaenopsis (note that on Troy Meyers site, the unknown genus and species flask of a pink flowering orchid, the pod collected in Dominca, 'the flower is like a Phalaenopsis', these flowers are huge!)...
Ok, so I have been to this place for ONLY a few hours, and look at all I found, I saw Epi. nocturnum on a dead tree, found a new species of Erythrodes, some Koellensteinia looking orchids (unsure what they were), a few Anthuriums (these aren't the showy ones, I saw a few on the side of a cliff, and they were quite large with green and black spathed flowers), many Gingers, lots of Heliconia, and Bananas everywhere! It was raining, and I had a time limit, so I had to run the entire way through the rainforest... the people I met knew a few orchid locations, but because of a few hours time, I had to decline the offer to go see them... there are also Vanilla planifolia (these people use Vanilla all the time) and one native told me he knew of a green flowered Vanilla... assuming to be V. beyrichii or V. mexicana... they also have lots of Cocoa plants, and lost of this aquatic plant, that the roots are edible...
But there are also other things there, like boating, rafting, etc... there is a Botanical Gardens there, but because of time, we passed right by...
[edited due to "offensiveness", sorry]...let me know if this sounds feasible (even if u all like to go to EC anyways, maybe an alternative trip or a second trip, etc...)
-P.A. Mahon
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