I'm SO excited

Congratulations, Ray. Dunno about guidance. Mine grow & flower (or not) according to their own peculiar preferences. The general wisdom seems to be that they like a cold (by Aussie standards) winter to promote flowering.

For more info on the species, the reference Kath gave you is a good one. I had scanned & emailed a lot of my stuff to her; then she found that site that had much of what I had sent her on it.

John may be able to tell you more. BTW, look at the Cedarvale site:

Ross grows beautiful speciosums, & his website has cultural info on it.

Dave Gillingham

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Well done, Ray. It is a given in Melbourne that if you are on the wrong side of 50 you should never buy a D. speciosum seedling as you might not live long enough to see it flower. They need to be quite a few years old before they bless you with some blooms (I have seen ones which are 15 + years old before first flowering) and even then it is no guarantee that they will flower every year. I grow mine outside under a jacaranda tree (deciduous) where they get full sun in winter and dappled light in summer and any rain that comes their way. Temperatures here get down to around 3 to

4°C during winter and as high as 42°C in summer. There is a view like Dave said, that they need a cold spell during winter to flower but I have been unable to verify that this is so. It seems that when mine are having a good flowering year everybody else's plants are as well (bugger!) so there may be some truth to climatic conditions initiating flowering. People talk about it either being a good or bad year for speciosums.

Geographically, D. speciosum is found from the NSW/Victorian border all the way up the east coast of Australia and there is considerable debate as to whether they are all the same species. Weather wise, the southern ones would be exposed to wet winters and dry, hot summers but as you move north into the tropics, this changes and you get wet moderate temperatures (mid

30s °C), high humidity summers and dry mild winters. So it is really difficult to recommend a watering regimen without knowing where the plant came from and most people have no idea if they bought their plant without provenance. You only know for sure if the plant is wild collected and that is usually illegal.

I look forward to seeing the photos of the flowers.

Cheers John

I'll tell you what, John. It sounds like this puppy is getting similar treatment - from a light perspective, anyway.

As I said, it's hung up near the vandas, and I grow with no shade cloth. The GH is, however, located near a 40 meter tall tulip poplar that filters the midday sun in the summer. Right now it's in full sun, if you want to call it that this far north.

It may see temperatures as high as 40°C - usually not, although close to that once you include solar heating if the plant tissues - but never below about 10°-15° (although we did have a power outage about 3 weeks ago, and the GH dropped to about 5° before I got the backup heater on).

I feed everything at every watering (125 ppm N using a 13-3-15-8Ca-2Mg fertilizer), and didn't know if they got any kind of rest in nature (I doubt those in your northeast do).

Over the last few years, it typically saw three or four growths start in the summer, but it has a single new on right now, as well. It's amazing how fast they grow.