Some orchids are just amazing bloomers, and this is definitely one of those. It blooms with this intense vigor twice a year in spring and fall with a sweet display of 30+ fragrant flowers with a lovely scent of honey. Masdevallia roseola is a miniature intermediate to cool growing epiphyte from Peru and Ecuador where it grows at elevations of 1500 to 1900 meters. I grow it mounted on EpiWeb in the cool vivarium at medium/low light levels.
Masdevallia roseola Luer, Phytologia 47: 67 (1980).
Good growing. I wish my roseola grew and bloomed with “intense vigor”.
Thanks! 🙂 I hope you can charm your M. roseola too.
Karma, I have a ballast that holds two Philips Pl-l 36w CFL’s. I have 4100K bulbs, and wondered if you thought that would be an adequate Kelvin temp. for growing phals, paphs and miltoniopsis. Or do I need to try to find some 5000K or 6500K bulbs? Thanks
Charles, I think 4100K bulbs works fine too. I use 4000K bulbs for my cool vivarium because the 80W Dulux do not come in a better color temperature (yet). The blue spectrum (6000-6500K) promotes vegetative growth, and warmer bulbs (3000K) promotes blooming. So in a perfect world I would like to complement those 4000K bulbs with some cooler ones as well, perhaps a future project. What you have to be on the watch for is if two 36W bulbs provide enough light for what you want to grow, especially if the artificial light is not supplemented with natural light, say in a window. Your 36W x2 produce about 5800 lumen, that is only about 540 fc (at 1 meter distance), but Phals, Paphs etc. are not very demanding when it comes to light so you will probably do fine, if not move them closer to the bulbs. I recommend you just try it, and adjust if needed.