Bloom Event - Brassia 'Big Spider'

I have to admit I've never been any good with Brassia - I've just never been able to work out what it is they want. Hence I've always failed with them. That was until I got hold of this bad boy; Brassia 'Big Spider'. That's not to say that all other Brassia don't still hate me, but we'll soon find out because while I was visiting an Orchid nursery at Christmas, three more Brassia accidentally fell into my basket. I'm told that the plant pictured below has a lot of Brassia verrucosa in it, so I'm hoping that the plants I bought will enjoy the same conditions as two of them are cultivars of Brassia verrucosa.  I got this particular plant in a job lot of exceedingly poor quality Brassia from Javado (yep, name and shame), and this is the only plant that survived whatever had been done to them before they reached me.

It's really hard to get a close up of the whole flower because the petals are just so darn long! The whole flower probably is over 6 inches from top to bottom and they are arranged so very neatly on an arching flower spike that they almost don't look real. The flowers carry a scent that isn't too strong (I often don't like the smell of Brassia, but I grow them anyway because they are just stunning), and is quite vanilla-y. At least it is at the moment. The scents on a lot of orchids have a tendency to change as the days progress. Last week's post on Coelogyne 'Rebecca Howe' is a case in point. Having sniffed a few more times over the weekend, it has lost that lovely chocolatey smell and now smells rather chemical.

Here's a photo of the whole flower spike....

As you can see, the flower spike grew upwards then arched over to display the flowers horizontally along the spike. I didn't give it any support or guidance, it did that all on its own. This hybrid has the rather pleasing habit of blooming twice from each pseudobulb. The first spike emerges while the new growth is still growing (the new pseudobulb hasn't appeared yet, and the new leaves are still unfolding); the second usually emerges once the new pseudobulb has matured and is about to start growing again. This hybrid does seem to rest for a few weeks before new growth starts so it's nice to see flowers at that time. It also acts as a marker to tell me its about to start growing again. Here's a photo of the entire plant....

As you can see, I have it planted in an aquatic pond pot in very coarse bark. It seems intent on climbing out of its pot no matter what. Some Brassia stay quite neat with nice clumping pseudobulbs so the plant can stay for some time in one container. Not so this one. I guess once it has done blooming I should really consider doing something with it. I have noticed that they don't keep live roots for very long, and I'm sure most of the roots in the pot are now dead (they would be 4 years old though, which is quite old for any orchid root).

This hybrid also seems rather prone to black spotting on the leaves. It doesn't matter whether I spray or don't spray, water more or water less, strong air movement or still air, the spots appear regardless. I've learned to live with them, but this plant will never be one I can show because its too 'shabby'.

I have to admit that I have checked on the International Orchid Register at the RHS, and I can't find any hybrid called 'Big Spider', though there are several other hybrids with 'Spider' in their grex name. That makes my plant techincally a noID, but I'll stick with the 'Big Spider' label as it seems rather fitting, somehow.