Coelogyne cristata

[emydura]

Flowered nicely this year.

 

[monocotman]

Lovely. an all time classic!
David

 

[KyushuCalanthe]

Beautiful specimen!

 

[Guldal]

Flowered nicely this year.

That is something of an understatement, David!
Well done!

 

[Paphman910]

Really beautiful! I have rarely seen a specimen that size! Last time I saw one was at the University of Victoria Green house back in the mid 80s!

 

[abax]

Gorgeous plant. I've never seen such an outstanding specimen.

 

[Ozpaph]

superbly grown and flowered, David.

 

[GuRu]

Congrats David. This plant with all its flowers would be 'The Champion Of The Show' and earn a gold medal here in Germany.

 

[emydura]

Congrats David. This plant with all its flowers would be 'The Champion Of The Show' and earn a gold medal here in Germany.

Thanks Rudolf. As luck has it, our orchid society is having its Spring show (virtually) this weekend. I'm busily sending in my photos as I write this. The cristata will be hard to beat for specimen of the show at the very least. I looked at previous cultural awards for this species here in Australia and I think I still have a little way to go. Previously awarded plants had more even flowering across the whole plant.

 

[GuRu]

Thanks Rudolf. As luck has it, our orchid society is having its Spring show (virtually) this weekend. I'm busily sending in my photos as I write this. The cristata will be hard to beat for specimen of the show at the very least. I looked at previous cultural awards for this species here in Australia and I think I still have a little way to go. Previously awarded plants had more even flowering across the whole plant.

Good luck, David and of course....fingers crossed.

 

[l_kikkert]

Very nice. Could you share your growing conditions; temperatures, humidity, lighting and growing mix. Thanks from a yank

 

[NEslipper]

Amazing specimen and congratulations on the culture, any accolades are well-deserved!

 

[emydura]

Very nice. Could you share your growing conditions; temperatures, humidity, lighting and growing mix. Thanks from a yank

This plant grows in my cool house where it has no heating or cooling. Temperatures go down to around 3 degrees Celsius in winter. Summer temperatures an be extreme reaching 40 degrees. The humidity can get very low, especially in summer. The conditions can be quite harsh in summer. It grows in quite a bright position. It only has an aluminet cover of 50%. I think it needs bright light to flower. I have another clone of cristata that was in the corner where it was darker and it did not flower at all. It is just growing in a relatively shallow pot with coarse bark. It really needs a repot. The growths are just growing on top of the old growths at the moment.

This is the first time I have got this plant to flower well. It has certainly enjoyed my new coolhouse, as has all my cool growing orchids. I use to grow it outside where I think it was just too cold plus the plants didn't get enough light in winter.

 

[Guldal]

Thanks Rudolf. As luck has it, our orchid society is having its Spring show (virtually) this weekend. I'm busily sending in my photos as I write this. The cristata will be hard to beat for specimen of the show at the very least. I looked at previous cultural awards for this species here in Australia and I think I still have a little way to go. Previously awarded plants had more even flowering across the whole plant.

Keep us posted about, how it fares, David!

 

[emydura]

Keep us posted about, how it fares, David!

Will do.

 

[l_kikkert]

This plant grows in my cool house where it has no heating or cooling. Temperatures go down to around 3 degrees Celsius in winter. Summer temperatures an be extreme reaching 40 degrees. The humidity can get very low, especially in summer. The conditions can be quite harsh in summer. It grows in quite a bright position. It only has an aluminet cover of 50%. I think it needs bright light to flower. I have another clone of cristata that was in the corner where it was darker and it did not flower at all. It is just growing in a relatively shallow pot with coarse bark. It really needs a repot. The growths are just growing on top of the old growths at the moment.

This is the first time I have got this plant to flower well. It has certainly enjoyed my new coolhouse, as has all my cool growing orchids. I use to grow it outside where I think it was just too cold plus the plants didn't get enough light in winter.

Thanks for sharing your environmental conditions. I have a hybrid of cristata called unchained melody which has a light yellow throat versus gold and it bloomed
(1 spike) for the 1st time this past spring after 5+ years of just existing. I live in the Atlanta Georgia area and our winters appear to be a bit more severe than yours as temps will dip below freezing fairly frequently. I have a grow room with an assortment of lighting, natural, led, cfl, which is heated and maintain a winter temperature of between 13-18 C with a fairly constant humidity of 85%. In summer, my grow area ranges up to 35 C and outside temps reaching 40+ C. I move most of my collection outdoors in the summer as we have good humidity and high levels of reflected light and keep most of them outside until temps get to 7-10 C at night. I may move it to the floor level in the winter to get a lower temperature Again thanks for the information and good luck with your judging.

larry

 

[NYEric]

JEEZ!!! WOW! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Karp60]

We had recently a speaker at our orchid club meeting, he suggested a lot of humidity and also extra calcium, which he adds to the water, in summer he sits them on saucers filled with pebbles to keep the humidity high. I have not had much luck with my mooreana but since I added the crashed egg shells, she looks much happier….

 

[emydura]

We had recently a speaker at our orchid club meeting, he suggested a lot of humidity and also extra calcium, which he adds to the water, in summer he sits them on saucers filled with pebbles to keep the humidity high. I have not had much luck with my mooreana but since I added the crashed egg shells, she looks much happier….

The humidity in which my Coelogyne's grow gets extremely low in summer. They seem to still do OK. This includes mooreana which is currently in bud. I do fertilise with a lot of Calcium.

 

[emydura]

Thanks for sharing your environmental conditions. I have a hybrid of cristata called unchained melody which has a light yellow throat versus gold and it bloomed
(1 spike) for the 1st time this past spring after 5+ years of just existing. I live in the Atlanta Georgia area and our winters appear to be a bit more severe than yours as temps will dip below freezing fairly frequently. I have a grow room with an assortment of lighting, natural, led, cfl, which is heated and maintain a winter temperature of between 13-18 C with a fairly constant humidity of 85%. In summer, my grow area ranges up to 35 C and outside temps reaching 40+ C. I move most of my collection outdoors in the summer as we have good humidity and high levels of reflected light and keep most of them outside until temps get to 7-10 C at night. I may move it to the floor level in the winter to get a lower temperature Again thanks for the information and good luck with your judging.

larry

Thanks Larry.

Our winters in extremely cold as well. Canberra is the coldest city in Australia. Temperatures can get as low as -8oC. I have grown Coelogyne's outside for many years, but recently I built an unheated greenhouse which protects them from the extreme cold. The greenhouse also provides the plants with very bright light during winter which is just as important. All my plants are flowering so much better now.

I also have Unchained Melody which flowered really nicely this year. You can see some of the cold damage on the leaves from growing out in the cold a couple of years back. Good luck getting yours to flower.