ANOS Sydney November 2018 Plant of the evening

Sarcochilus Serenade.

It is a Sarcochilus hybrid (Sarco. Yvette X Sarco. Melody) and has the parentage of Sarco. hartmannii (31 %), Sarco. fitzgeraldii (56 %) and Sarco. falcatus (13%). The plant has three inflorescences each with 6-12 about fairly large sized flowers each carrying a large labellum with orange markings. The white tepals were covered with attractive concentric red/purple markings towards the centres of the flowers.

2018 has been a rather poor flowering season for Sarcochilus orchids in Sydney, probably due to the prolonged hot summer and warmer than normal autumn, both not conducive to good flowering of these orchids. In the case of the plant benched, the rather short racemes resulting in the flowers looking a bit crowded may be the result of the unfavourable seasonal conditions.

According to Jorn and Yvonne Villien, the plant benched is one of the dozens they grew out of a flask. The interesting thing they pointed out is that the siblings have been flowering in different times of the year, as late as February. Like all their Sarcochilus orchids, the plant has been grown under shade cloth and standing on shallow trays filled with gravels and water to maintain humidity during dry conditions.

Sarcochilus Serenade

Photo by Sau-wan Chan