Bloom Event - Vanda Princess Mikasa Pink and Purple.

I can but live in hope that I am keeping up with the nomenclature of these plants. God forbid I should get it wrong! As I understand it, all of Ascocentrum has now been subsumed into Vanda (again), so these two hybrids that I have always known as Ascocenda are now correctly labelled as Vanda. Whether I agree that they should be in the same genus or not is not relevant here (I do!), but I do find the name changes stupendously tedious. Especially since the names will probably change again during the next round of name changes. As a rule, I tend not to change labels at all if I can help it. If I decide to sell a plant (it is not unheard of), I'll write a currently correct label then.

At any rate, here I present not one but two lovely Vanda hybrids. First off, we have Vanda Princess Mikasa 'purple'.

Unfortuately, the flowers seem to have opened at all angles on this one. This is, in fact, my only complaint about this hybrid. Its flowers are rather crowded on the spike, so they rarely open at the right angle. The colour in real life is much more purple than this photo which makes them look rather blue (which is ironic, since the photos of the proper blue Vanda I have always come out looking purple).

The plant is strong and healthy. I grow my Vanda in pots, as it is not practical for me to have them bare root as most growers do. There is a trend now for growing Vanda in glass vases (which I started myself several years ago) which works fine if you don't have too many plants. For me, it is much easier nowadays to grow Vanda in deep rose pots with coarse bark. Some take to this method of culture (such as this one), some hybrids don't. I have started an experinent with some other Vanda which needed something doing with them anyway using large pond pots filled with coarse bark, the idea being that the air can move around the roots more freely than it can in a pot. We will see how the plants do.

Here we have Vanda Princess Mikasa 'Pink'.

In real life, this is real bright smack-you-in-the-face bright pink, the phto has come out rather dull. This is another easy grower, just like the purple discussed earlier.

The pink variety has smaller flowers than the purple but they do tend to be better spaced on the spike. I All varieties (I have a blue and a white, too) seem to flower several times a year, giving a better turnaround than most of my Phalaenopsis. Even now that I've sold most of my Vanda, there always seems to be at least one in flower. The white one is in spike as I type this. Again.

Vanda do have something of a fearsome reputation for being 'difficult', and this is not entirely unfounded. This is mostly because they dislike the cold and dark winters we have (and summers, some years) this far north. Where they come from, there aren't such defined seasons as ours. In winter under natural light, Vanda deal with this by entering a semi-dormant phase where they stop growing and the root tips cover over with velamen until conditions improve. It can take several weeks of these improved conditions to wake the plants up again, by which time quite a lot of valuable growing season has passed. Not only this, the plants will not tolerate being too wet during this period, which causes problems if plants are grown potted. Most plants are sold bare-root and are hung up to allow air to the roots. In a nice humid warm greenhouse, this is fine, but the plants cannot survive like that in a heated living room as the humidity and light levels will be too low. The solution to this is to place the plant in the neck of a glass vase so the roots dangle down inside where some extra humidity is trapped. The green portion of the plant should remain in the open air, as the leaves are not so humidity dependant as the roots, and extra water round the leaf axils can result in rot. Growing them in vases has its drawbacks too, of course. Vases full of water during watering time are heavy and cumbersome. The filling and emptying of vases can result in the delicate root tips in the vase getting damaged which results in them stopping growth. Anyone with several Vanda will tell you that they take up a lot of space when grown in vases. However, good results can be achieved this way if one is careful.

For me, in pots under lights works well, so that is the method I shall stick to. I will post again regarding my pond pot experiment, either in jubilation or floods of tears, depending on the outcome.