Pleurothallid-l mailing list

[leo.schordje@degussa.com]

It has been slow on this digest the last few months. No time to yack it up?
I'm just dropping a note in to celebrate that  I have 2 flowers on my Masd
datura. Yes !!!!   I had bought this plant 3 years ago from Ecuagenera. It
immediately dropped a couple leaves and sulked for a couple years. It did
send up a single flower last year, spectacular enough to convince me I need
to hang on to it. Now a number of newer  growths have finally matured.  It
now has 2 flowers. What a spectacular, large and fragrant flower. It smells
a lot like a Brugmansia, Perfumes the whole area. I wonder if it has the
same alkaloids in the leaves? Nah, too small and  pretty to think about
ingesting.  Note, I am just joking, at my age, the only thing I will risk
doing  that elevates blood pressure involves a partner, privacy and at
least partial  nudity, considering my looks, lights out too please!  (for
those who don't know, Brugmansia and Datura have powerful cardiac alkaloids
that will induce hallucinations and wildly raise blood pressure, death is
an occasional unwanted side effect).
      Does anyone know if M. datura was named datura for the flower's
large white tube, like a datura or was it named for the fragrance being
like a datura or brugmansia?
      The Masd datura seems to be picking up speed as far as growths and
vigor go. I think it has finally acclimated enough and developed enough
mass that it will forgive my occasional horticultural insults. I grow
intermediate under lights in a basement grow area in the Midwest. It is on
a bench with several Paph micranthum, & a Dryadella under cool white
lights. No fancy growing case, just a low tech basic basement set up.  I
use 50% Lake Michigan tap water mixed with 50% RO water.   When I run out
of time to make more RO, I use straight 250 ppm Tap Water. So far so good.
I use the same for my Dryadella edwallii, for which I got my first ever CCM
this year. 86 points. Proof, you can do at least some of the really nice
Masdevallias without resorting to high tech gadgetry.
Happy growing,
Leo