Ida cinnabarina

Such a shy plant, this Ida (syn. Sudamerlycaste) cinnabarina. Its nodding flower faces the ground, the interior visible only to surface dwellers and I had to get down on my hands and knees in the Tropical High Elevation House and gently prop the flower on a Macleania leaf in order to get an eye level view. I was startled to find a bold lip the color of cinnabar.

Cinnabar is the common name of mercuric sulfide, the ore from which mercury is extracted. The bright scarlet mineral was at one time the source of the pigment used in Chinese red lacquer.

Ida cinnabarina is a large terrestrial, or sometimes lithophytic orchid that grows at 1900 to 2600 meters elevation in bright light in Ecuador, Peru, and possibly Colombia. Henry Oakeley, in Lycaste, Ida and Anguloa (2008), states that the flowers secrete nectar from the base of the sepals and from the underside of the lip. 'Streams of small black ants form endless chains collecting the nectar, and in turn it is proposed, protecting the flower from hungry caterpillars.' But the ants are not the pollinators. According to Oakeley, Calaway Dodson reported seeing the flowers visited by Xylocopas (carpenter) bees at Baños, Ecuador. Between dusk and midnight, the flowers are said to be fragrant of wintergreen. Looks like I'll be returning after dark to find out.

The Greenhouse in Midwinter

Saturday seemed like the darkest day of the year. Ten hours of twilight followed by fourteen hours of night. Outside was a warm blanket of fog. Inside the greenhouse, the plants yawned and went back to sleep. But not our tiny Ida lata. It glowed like a candelabra.

I admit I have kind of a thing for this genus, the former Lycaste species from South America now properly called Sudamerlycaste. I love the subtle ivory and olive color. And that fringe. Sudamerlycaste is a genus for connoisseurs of lip fringe.

Sudamerlycaste fimbriata has a more robust flower, about four inches from top to bottom, with a nice sawtooth fringe. It's a ghostly presence in our dark greenhouse.

Many of the Sudamerlycaste species are suited to a cool greenhouse, but ours are, for the present, tolerating intermediate temperatures (60º-ish night minimum), probably because the last two summers have been uncharacteristically cool. We grow our plants in a mixture of premium long-fibered sphagnum and coarse chopped tree fern fiber.