The following two letters appeared in Orchids in NZ 12.6 (1986) and were in reply to a cry for help from a Te Puke grower who found her Brassia verrucosa, which she had divided, easy enough to grow, but not one piece had yet flowered. As this plant is popular with Tauranga Orchid Society members, I thought it might be helpful to know what advice they gave in ‘the old days’.

Glenn Anderson of Rotorua wrote:

We bought our plant from a society sales table 5 years ago. It was obviously a back division, consisting of two large, old bulbs and four much smaller, newer bulbs. For the next 3 years it continued to grow and multiply with never a sign of a flower. Then, 2 years ago it had two small spikes and last year three much larger spikes and more flowers.

Culturally, we treat our plant like a sunny Miltonia. We grow mostly Cattleyas, which are allowed to become fairly dry between waterings, but the Miltonias get misted every warm day and watered two to three times more often than the Cattleyas. But whereas the Miltonias are kept slightly shaded the Brassia is kept in a brighter spot.

Our glasshouse temperature doesn’t go below 12C in winter and gets up to 30C on a warm summer’s day. The catch words for our growing conditions would have to be:

• Warm
• Sunny
• Moist.

And we must be doing something right. There are now (August, 1986) seven new spikes showing.

Bob McCulloch of Wellington wrote:

A couple of years ago I saw a backbulb of Brassia verrucosa on the sales table at a spring show. As the saying goes, it is a beginner’s plant and I liked the look of it, so it came home with me and has lived with my Cattleyas ever since.

It has grown in an unspectacular sort of way, with long pauses in the winter which make me almost forget about it, so when I read the letter, it seemed like a good time to pick it up and see what it was up to. It was a bit of a surprise to see that it was in spike, as I was mentally prepared to wait another few years and several repottings before giving my ‘beginner’s plant’ to another beginner just to get a bit of bench space.

During last summer the plant was kept in the greenhouse with Cattleya seedlings, shaded with two layers of 30% shadecloth, and with the walls and half of the roof area covered with white expanded polystyrene, and with the floor and plants hosed every morning before I went to work. Watering was done between one and three times a week, depending on the weather, and feeding was carried out after every watering. Temperatures were a maximum of 35C during the day and sometimes as low as 16C at night, and humidity varied between 60% and 100%.

As the weather got cooler, watering and feeding was gradually reduced to once every 2 weeks, and from the beginning of June was stopped altogether except for a spray with the hose once a month on a sunny day. The thermostat is set to turn on the heater at 12C, but with the cold weather during winter it couldn’t keep the temperature up and on several occasions it dropped to 6C.

All the seedlings have started to put out new shoots and watering/feeding was started again in early September. The Brassia hasn’t got a new shoot, so the spike may be a desperate attempt to flower and reproduce before dying, or it could be the natural growth pattern of the plant.

In any event, it is going to flower and I can’t really say it has received any special treatment. Now that I know it is difficult to flower, next year will be the test.

**

Brassia verrucosa is an epiphytic orchid native to Mexico, Central America, Venezuela, and Brazil. It is a warm- to cool-growing epiphyte native to humid, evergreen to semi-deciduous cloud forests at altitudes of 900 to 2,400m. This orchid has a very short winter dormancy, but needs less water in total during the colder months. It wants a short rest (about 3 weeks) from watering and feeding immediately after flowering. Bright light, but not direct sun, year round.