Tolumnia calochila

Slippertalk Orchid Forum

Help Support Slippertalk Orchid Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

mrhappyrotter

Grand Chupacabra
Joined
Dec 26, 2012
Messages
2,923
Reaction score
651
Location
Central North Carolina
I like everything about this species! It's small. The foliage is sort of terete, quite different from most Tolumnias I'm familiar with. The flowers are a lovely yellow color (my favorite). The flower shape is distinctive and unique. It seems to be easy to grow and blooms reliably each year. And my absolute favorite thing about this species is the fantastic fragrance! It's strong relative to the size of the flowers, and it's the purest essence of sweet floral scents that you can get. If you've ever smelled Cymbidium sinense, these flower smell almost identical to that.

This plant came from Louisiana Orchid Connection some years ago. It's mounted to a small cypress chunk. I basically spray it with a bit of water most days. It gets high light and warm temperatures as well as good air flow, but doesn't seem to be particularly demanding or difficult (fingers crossed AND knocking on wood).

20240127_160931.jpg


20240127_160948.jpg

This time around I'm getting 2 spikes with 2 flowers each. The flowers are actually fairly long lived, uncommon for such (relatively) strongly scented blooms.
 
I had one before and mine only lived a year or so, tiny little thing...the leaves/growth are very unique too...I thought I had a photo of it but I couldn't find it last night.
It is not easy to grow or bloom as I was told...so congrats! I don't remember if the flower was fragrant but it has been a long time ago. Do you have to get very close to the flower to detect the fragrance?

My plant was from Andy's Orchids and It was in bud when I got it...
 
Last edited:
Interestingly enough, one of the spikes this year has decided to branch. This is the first year that's happened. The branches have significantly extended the blooming season! This has more or less been in bloom since January of this year, so already 6 months of blooms. This is incredible for such a small growing orchid.
 

Attachments

  • tolumnia1.jpg
    tolumnia1.jpg
    351.7 KB
  • tolumnia2.jpg
    tolumnia2.jpg
    341.7 KB
  • tolumnia3.jpg
    tolumnia3.jpg
    308.6 KB

Latest posts

Back
Top