PUSHING THE BORDERS

I have been growing Pleione for a while now, but in the last few years I have been more and more impressed. My plants are all quite old cultivars with pink and white flowers .


1 Pleione formosana Oriental Splendour, Ian Butterfield 190413 by John Jearrard, on Flickr

Pleione formosana 'Oriental Splendour' is typical of the sort of thing I have been growing.

I decided that I was going to look for something newer this year and was lucky enough to visit Ian Butterfield who has been breeding and selling Pleione for several decades and has some magnificent new plants.


2 Pleione 1, Ian Butterfield 190413 by John Jearrard, on Flickr

The adult plants were at their peak - he is about to start putting them in a cold store so they will remain in perfection for the Malvern Show in a couple of weeks.


3 Pleione forrestii 3, Ian Butterfield 190413 by John Jearrard, on Flickr

Pleione forrestii caused astonishment when it was introduced and extended the range of colours possible among hybrids. It isn't easy to grow but it has produced some good seedlings.
There are a number of pale yellow and primrose cultivars coming onto the market but the very latest plants are combining the pink and yellow to produce reds and oranges.


4 Pleione Betty Arnold 'Firefinch' 1, Ian Butterfield 190413 by John Jearrard, on Flickr

Pleione Betty Arnold 'Firefinch' was looking good on the day, and there are others even closer to a true red. I was hoping that I would be able to get an orange one, but they are very new and will not be available for a couple of years.



5 Pleione Pete Chew 1, Ian Butterfield 190413 by John Jearrard, on Flickr

This is on my list for the future, Pleione Pete Chew.

The one that really took my eye was Pleione Edgecombe 'Bat Hawk', wonderful colour, wonderful shape in the lip. I have started saving!


6 Pleione Edgecombe 'Bat Hawk' 3, Ian Butterfield 190413 by John Jearrard, on Flickr


They need a bit of protection to prosper. They are completely dormant in winter and can take a bit of frost, but they have to be completely dry.

Anybody else growing them?

When I first started here I had bought some off good old J Parker and put them straight in the garden! they lasted about 8 years but eventually the combination of wet and cold saw them off. seeing those pictures they really have come a long way since then, some of those are very beautiful

I first grew them back in the 60's and in those days the most exotic were forrestii and formosana 'Polar Sun'. 'Oriental Splendour' went by the name of P. pricei and autumn flowering sp. (especially P. maculata) vexed almost everyone due to their need for winter warmth and summer heat. At the time, the assumption was that all Pleiones were near-alpines requiring very cool conditions.
In recent years, Paul Cumbleton and Ian Butterfield have done much to introduce some spectacular hybrids with wonderful, previously unimagined colours and happily, these are slowly becoming more readily available although many remain rather expensive. Last autumn, after a 30 year break in growing them, I resumed collecting Pleiones and have gathered a small collection of around 20 hybrids and species. They suit me because they are compact growers and most can be placed outside in summer. Each pseudo bulb can produce two or even three new flowering bulbs for the following year and many will also develop tiny bulbils on the old bulbs and these can be grown on to flowering in about 3 years. The spring flowering types very easily stored over winter ( I use the salad crisper in my fridge!) so they can be bagged, labelled and stashed away for a couple of months. Here's a few of those that have already flowered for me this year:

Pleione Rakata 'Locking Stumps'



Pleione Tolima



Pleione Berapi



Pleione Stromboli 'Fireball'



Pleione forrestii



Pleione limprichtii



Pleione formosana 'Cairngorm'



Pleione Jorullo



The natural hybrid P. x barbarae will open over the next few days - currently the bud is already at least 10cms long, indicating that it will be a very large flower.

I plan to get more this coming autumn and will be on the look out for any that crop up over the summer months. I'm in danger of becoming somewhat fanatical about these little orchids, but at least they won't take up the space and resources that so many of the larger exotics seems to demand.

Beautiful pictures Dave, I admire your P.forrestii, mine isn't going to flower this year. Are you growing it in moss or a bark mix?

Thanks John. Forrestii was the first one to flower this year - it can be a bit 'touch and go' and I can remember having trouble with it many years ago. The base of the new growths must be very sharply drained otherwise the roots simply stay put or even rot. I loosely placed a mix of 80:20 sphagnum moss : melcourt bark in the base of the pot, added a small pile of coarse perlite and sat the bulb on that so that any new roots would first grow out into pure perlite. More moss/bark was added to cover the lower part of the bulb and barely kept moist by lightly misting. It seems to be working well, because growth is very vigorous so far. I've got a few more Pleiones that I'm growing in the 80:20 moss bark mix - Plne. aurita, x barbarae and humilis although I've not sat those on perlite mounds within the pot. Plne. aurita has a very glamorous flower, but it barely lasted a week and was over before I could grab a decent pic. Humilis did not flower, which is a disappointment, but it took an age to start into growth and at least it is on the move now.

Thanks for that Dave, I will see if mine grows faster in a better drained mix.