Anguloa cliftonii

Even if it weren't scented like an ice cream sundae, this pale yellow tulip orchid with red marbled petals and gracefully curved sepals would still be one of our most striking species. But best of all is what's hidden inside.

As I unwrapped the layers of sepals and petals, the sight of the lip actually made me laugh.

All anguloas have a hinged lip to facilitate pollination, but cliftonii's lip has something special in the way of ornamentation.

The lip is a miniature bowl with flared edges, and its ornate apex arches backwards as Henry Oakeley writes in his book Lycaste, Ida and Anguloa, "like the handle of a ewer." Ewer?

That sent me on a Google search. Above is the lip rotated 180º and flipped horizontally, looking like a tiny pitcher with a handle, a ewer. How cool is that?

The apex of the lip is the source of the fragrance, which is highly attractive to at least one species of Euglossine bees. It is angled toward the column, so that the bee's weight causes it to tilt toward the anther cap and pollinarium. Upon contact the pollinarium is attached to the bee's abdomen.

Our tulip orchids are off to a slow start this summer, but I expect there will be many for you to see in the Orchid Display House in July. They are wonderful!

A Natural Hybrid

It was the single orange flower in a sea of yellow tulip orchids that stopped me in my tracks. We don't have many Anguloa x ruckeri in our greenhouse and it was worth stopping for a second look. Anguloa x ruckeri is a naturally occurring hybrid between Anguloa hohenlohii and Anguloa clowesii.

It grows terrestrially at 900 to 2000 meters elevation in Venezuela and is known at least historically from Colombia as well, according to Henry Oakeley in Lycaste, Ida and Anguloa, The Essential Guide (2008).

This individual has inherited an overlay of red spots from its hohenlohii parent. They coalesce into a deep rose colored wash on the interior. After I removed a petal and sepal, the lip (on the left) became visible opposite the column.

The lip is joined to the column by a tiny hinge at the foot of the column. As is typical in anguloas, the column foot is very long -in the photo above it is deep red. The hinge allows the lip to swing toward the column, bumping the bee against the anther cap at the end of the column.

The upper surface of the lip. It is intermediate in shape between Anguloa clowesii and Anguloa hohenlohii.

The underside of the lip.

Oakeley states that Anguloa x ruckeri is reported as growing in the same conditions in the wild as A. clowesii and A. hohenlohii. In cultivation, our plants are growing well in an intermediate greenhouse with 60º night minimum temperature and 70% shade.

Anguloa

Here's a mystery for you. The lovely Tulip Orchid pictured above we received as Anguloa x ruckeri, a hybrid between Anguloa clowesii and Anguloa hohenlohii. Looks to me like there may be something else, perhaps some pink Anguloa uniflora lurking somewhere in its pedigree. Regardless, it's a beautiful plant. There are a dozen or so species of Anguloa native to the Andean tropics. They are among the most beautiful orchids in our collection.

Anguloa clowesii

Anguloa clowesii flowering at the Atlanta Botanical Garden

I love that some of our Tulip Orchids are flowering indoors while our Horticulture staff is planting actual tulips outdoors.

Tulip Orchids are Andean in origin. Anguloa clowesii is native to Colombia and Venezuela where it grows at 1800 to 2800 m on the western slopes of the Andes. It was collected in 1842 by Jean Linden near the Nevado of Tolima, a Colombian volcano. Alvaro Arango M. writes in Orchids of Colombia, Vol. I, that in order to throw other collectors off the trail Linden reported it to be from the Sierra Nevado of Santa Marta, a coastal mountain range much farther north and not a part of the Andean mountain chain. This sort of deception was a fairly common practice among competing collectors. Linden named his discovery after one of the British financiers of his expedition, the Rev. J. C. Clowes of Manchester. Linden and his son later founded one of the most profitable 19th century orchid collecting firms.

Autumnal Anguloa

Some of our Tulip Orchids (Anguloa) are producing a late season flush of flowers.

I'm unsure of the identity of this lovely Anguloa which is unfortunately missing its label. The lip (barely visible in the photos) has characteristics that are intermediate between a couple of species. It may be a hybrid. For the moment it is a question mark, but still beautiful.

I love that the coloration is more vivid on the interior of the flower than on the exterior--clearly it's intended for the private enjoyment its pollinator. It's hard to look at this flower without wondering how the pollinator, a euglossine bee, experiences the colorful pattern and fragrance.

Tulip Orchid Tuesday

Anguloa hohenlohii

All of the Tulip Orchids are lovely, but the russet colored Anguloa hohenlohii is especially beautiful. The inside of the flower is gold overlaid with red spots.

Anguloa clowesii

If you can tear your eyes away from the flowers you will see the new shoot visible behind the flowers. Those new shoots are practically begging for food. Tulip Orchids can become very large in bright light, coolish temperatures and with regular fertilizing during active growth. Some of the largest that I have seen were grown by Marc Hachadourian at the New York Botanical Garden-- beautiful plants with enormous pseudobulbs and leaves nearly two feet tall.

Many anguloas produce new shoots and flowers simultaneously, a trait that can exasperate a grower. (Shoots produced after flowering is a more common sequence in orchids.) By the time our plants have finished flowering and returned to the back up greenhouse the young shoots are nearly mature. I have to rush like crazy in order to repot them all before they finish their annual growth cycle. And I already have plenty to repot!

Tulip Orchids

Anguloa uniflora 

June is a terrific month to visit the Fuqua Orchid Center. Three outstanding orchid groups flower simultaneously: Laelia purpurata, Stanhopea and the Tulip Orchids (Anguloa).

This week you can see several Tulip Orchid species, including Anguloa virginalis and uniflora, pictured below growing side by side in the Tropical High Elevation House. In Peru these two species are often found growing together according to Henry Oakeley's book, Lycaste, Ida and Anguloa.

Both species grow as terrestrials or lithophytes in Andean tropics at about 1200 to 1500 m. Anguloa uniflora is endemic to Peru and it grows in extremely variable habitats--dry sunny slopes to moist dappled woodlands, writes Oakeley. Anguloa virginalis occurs over a wider geographical range Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia often in full sun.

Cool and sunny is a big challenge in our greenhouses in summer. As our summers grow hotter more of our anguloas have begun to migrate permanently from the intermediate back up greenhouse to the Tropical High Elevation House.

Tulip Orchid fragrance will surprise you. It's Elmer's paste with a hint of menthol, an enticing aroma to male bees of certain species in the genus Eulaema. They collect the liquid fragrance by scratching the flower lip. The fragrance may be used to attract female Eulaema bees.

Anguloa uniflora in the Tropical High Elevation House

Anguloa is sometimes called the Cradle Orchid, in reference to movement of the lip, visible in the photo (above) edged with yellow. When a bee alights on the hinged lip his weight causes it to rock backward, pushing him up against the tip of the column and in contact with the pollen masses.  The bee often leaves the flower with the pollen attached to his thorax. It's easy to rock the "cradle" using your fingertip.

Anguloa virginalis in the Tropical High Elevation House

The journey of these two Tulip Orchids from the Andean rainforests to the 18th century Spanish court of Carlos III is a story with an Indiana Jones flavor. More about that in an upcoming post.

Baby Boom in the Orchid Nursery

Orchid seedlings in one of our back up greenhouses

A big priority for us this year has been to pollinate some of the choicest orchids in our collection. We have two goals. The first is to generate more plants for installation in the Fuqua Orchid Center. The second, and more important, is to reinvigorate our collection by producing healthy young seedlings.

Sarah removes the anther cap from Anguloa clowesii

Selfing, or fertilizing a plant with its own pollen, is simple and can produce a reasonable percentage of vigorous orchid seedlings. But many rare orchids in collections today are highly inbred, the result of many generations of selfings. Some are the descendants of just a single plant collected in the wild decades ago, before CITIES restricted importation. Unfortunately, an inbred plant often grows poorly, a tendency that becomes more pronounced with age.

Removing the pollinarium from the anther cap

Any plant that is maintained in a collection for many years needs to be vegetatively propagated by cuttings or division at intervals in order to provide replacement material. But when inbreeding contributes to its decline, then performing an outcross (i.e., use genetically different parents to produce seed) can be the best way to obtain healthy offspring while preserving some of the original genes. Outcrossing introduces new genes into the next generation and means that more offspring will be vigorous.

Sarah pollinating Anguloa clowesii

Data-the date and parentage- is recorded on a label and on a form and then transferred to an Excel file

The label is attached to the orchid below the  ovary

In upcoming posts we will follow the development of some of our pods.