I got this cute little miniature in a trade with a friend back in December. It is native to South America where it grows at altitudes of 1700 meters. The flowers are adorable but super tiny, only about 3 mm. It is times like these I really wished I had a real macro lens… It blooms on a fairly short inflorescence in small clusters of successively opening flowers. Mine has three inflorescences with about 8-10 flowers each, but you really have to look at them through a magnifying glass to appreciate the incredible detail. The flowers last for a long time too which is extra nice. This one has been blooming for about a month now – I have been trying to photograph it since then!
I have grown this on the windowsill in sphagnum moss since December, and it did flower for me, something that made me very happy. I hope that it will be even happier in its new home, the cool vivarium. The smaller photo shows the plant in its new location, mounted on an EpiWeb branch in the new viv. This has been an absolute crazy week, but I have some great new photos to show from the last two weeks of vivarium building. Hopefully I will have time to post more on that this weekend.
I look forward to seeing your new photos when you have time! 🙂
Thanks! Yes this is just crazy… I cannot believe how fast time just slips away. Seems I cannot get half of the stuff I want to do done. But it is coming, I promise. I have so many orchids blooming right now too, I really need to photograph them so you guys can see them too. 🙂
There is also a whole yellow type, but this redish one is much nicer! Try giving it a lot of light and suddenly after a year or 2 it will become a Platystele sphere!
Thanks Daniel! I really love this little one. It has been blooming for several months now and there is more coming. I saw the yellow form at an orchid show this weekend and the flowers look identical, but my flowers on mine are larger in size, maybe twice as big (about 5 mm across). Do you know if the red form is larger if the flowers can vary that much in size?
I ve just went to the backyard and I compared them both, it seems to me they are the same size, may be it is about the growing conditions or something, BUT red lip plants are much more compact and dense while whole yellow plants looks thinier and usually dont form that large rounded plants, even when grown at the same conditions at home
Thanks a lot Daniel. Must be growing conditions then. You are right about the plant shape, the yellow form I saw at the show did have a less compact growing style. I like the rounded plant form better and look forward to my own Platystele sphere in a few years! It has a lot of room to expand on its EpiWeb branch.