Thank you for making these videos. I've only recently become an orchid hobbyist, and your videos are by far the most educational and accessible for beginners, while still having expert knowledge that I know I'll appreciate as I become more experienced.
I have a mini Cattleya that is extremely fragrant. She has a citrus floral fragrance. It’s a lovely “blue” color too. I love mine. She’s a LC Mini Purple ‘Blue Hawaii’.
This video was so useful for someone with limited space and a love for fragrant flowers. It saved me so much time researching. Thank you VERY much!! Would love to see more videos like this if you have any other recommendations!!
My absolute favorite orchid (currently at least!) is a fragrant mini, the Gastrochilus Retrocalla! Half inch fringed yellow flowers with a lemony scent, it’s adorable and smells great!
I love your videos! I am learning so much about orchids from you and my passion for orchids grows with every video. Your explanations are eloquent and enjoyable. Keep up the good work!! I look forward to learning more from you.
Enjoyable video! I had a Cattleya mossiae that smelled like hyacinths. I do not remember anything unpleasant about it. I recently got a Maxillaria tenuifolia, which has that characteristic coconut fragrance. My mom describes it as subtle, but I can smell it before entering the room.
2:44 is that a miniature of Sherry baby? I used to be able to find those from time to time but have not seen them for years and loved their appearance and their smell which only appeared at different times of the day, was not able to keep them alive long-term unlike some of my Cactus and succulents which I've had for 30 years, but pretty plant, that first plant with the fringy flowers at the beginning look like a parent or related to Sherry baby also, what was its name? Thank you
Hey Danny! I was wondering if you have any tips on identifying orchids that were purchased at grocery stores, or gifted to me by friends that came without labels. I have many Oncidiums, fragrant and non-fragrant, from tiny size flowers, to flowers the size of a digestif biscuit. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!
Hey there, can you give me the name of the orchid you showed at the beginning? It was so stunning and I saw this in one of your videos but couldnt find it anymore. Such a unique species!
I also wondered, it has a similar but much more exotic appearance than Sherry baby which is the only orchid I could find years ago that consistently smelled, it did at odd times, sometimes it did smell and sometimes not, but the same colors and patterning on the flowers
You are going to love the Cattleya Walkeriana. I had a hybrid of it crossed with Cattleya labiata and it smelled like vanilla mixed with some kind of chemical underlayer. That underlayer kind of reminded of mothballs but regardless my wife and dog wanted to eat the blooms. I regrett to say that I no longer own this plant because I decided to get another walkeriana hybrid that didn't have mutant blooms with extra petals and sex organs. Every bloom was different from the next and quite monstrously deformed.
Judging by the leaves, you have Ang leonis Comoros variety, so it will grow quite bigger than the Madagascar version of it, leaves are less fleshy and it requires more water to thrive vs the super succulent leaves of the Madagascar one, in case you wanted to know :P I would add to this list tuberolabium, such as Tuberolabium kotoense or quisumbinguii. They dont grow very big and they produce tiny blooms that pack a punch of fragrance for the size. Nice list regardless :)
Correct me if im wrong, but I recall you having a dendrobium speciosum. Could you do an update on it and some care tips? I just got one and it's in pretty rough shape.
Dani, Since you mentioned the name change on the Sedeia japonica's name I wonder if in a Q & A video you could mention something about why orchids undergo name changes? Who initiates it? Is it scientifically based? Thanks for another interesting video.
Yes, It's scientifically based. many many orchids and especially orchid genera were described in the 19. century and in the beginning of the 20. century, when the understanding of how species form wasn't as well understood and not as well testable, since there were little to none methods of working with DNA sequences and the only thing to indicate whether a certain orchid belonged to a genus or not was how it looked like - which is generally OK, but in some cases proves very diffcult or unreliable, because you group orchids together on how they look, not by if they are really related. Because it was hard to tell in some groups which are related or not, the splitting of genera was somewhat arbitrary at times, some species landed in wrong genera altogether, or, some groups were split into too many small genera (many realtives of Vandas), while other large groups were placed into giant unmanageable and uninformative genera (like Dendrobiums- when growing a Dendrobium, you always have to know which type of them you have, as they grow radically different from eachother, because they are only distantly related, and Pleurothallis, which is the largest genus ever made and holds practically no information except thet the species in it are Pleurothallids). This is why taxonomists and botanists in recent years, with advances in molecular biology (however, DNA sequences and their overusage without supporting morphological data can also be misleading) and better understanding of speciation, make corrections to these old systems - to make genera, that hold more information about relatedness and biology of the species within - often these changes carry some value for (hobby) growers, because members of the genus usually require similar (not the same) care, or look alike. many other times it holds little to no value to hobby growers and it just changes the names. what is important: usally the name change doesn't make the old names wrong, and it is not wrong to use them - they are synonyms: words that mean the same. It is however desirable to use the "correct" name in scientific works, but for hobbyists it doesn't matter whether you write Sedirea or Phalaenopsis on the tag - if you get confused, there are interenet pages with lists of synonyms (the plant list), and you just tye in the species and it spouts out all the synonyms (it is however not updated every year...) This next paragraph is relating as to what kin of groups the scientists are trying to make: When we are grouping the species together, it is like trying to pick out a family you do not know from a group of people Generally it is considered best to have all descendands of the last common ancestor grouped in one greoup (goes for all ranks - the order family, genus etc. - this is just the scale at which you look at the same thing) , in human terms, we consider family everyone that has the same great-grandmother (and let's say for genus the same grandmother, but is now not really important). And generally , family members look similar - if we go back to orchids- orchids constitute a nice family - an ancestor had certain qualities (reduction of number of anthers to 3 or less, mostly even to one, one petal trasformed into a lip...) that now all orchids share and are now very easily recognisable as a family. - same as a human family with a strong trait - like the shape of the nose, which all family members have. A family (or genus) like that is easy to recognize and pick out. Now back to the humans analogy - most families look kinda similar, but often one (some) person (let's say the goth cousin, with his nose shape less prominent (but still there), different haircolour...) looks radically different than everybody else - if someone who does not know the family (let's call them Johnsons), he will easily pick out all the cousins except the goth one, because he is so different. And the family would not be complete - in systematic we call that a paraphyletic group - we indetified some members of the family but others were left out. The Sedirea japonica is the goth cousin in the Phalaenopsis "family" - it loooks a bit different than the rest of them, but is actually a part of the genus - so Phalaenopses are not complete without the Sedirea japonica In some rare cases family members dont look alike, they lack good defining features, and someone that does not know them can't put them well together from a group of people - and he assembles a family solely by how similar he feels the people look - this is resulting in a polyphyletic group - and that's what happened when scinetists in 19. century tried to classify orchids - they put everything in very few genera (at one point, they classified everything that growed epiphytically and Epidendrum, which is clearly not the best option), which wouldn't be useful and didn't reflect the similarities. In this analogy i put the limit of the family at all that had the same great-grandmother (grand mother for genus) - that's 4 generations. In biology we are talking about 1000s of generations and things often aren't as clear - it isn't clear where the limit for genus - Example: the group of orchids, containing Oncidium, Odontoglossum, Cochlioda, Brassia, Miltonia, Miltoniopsis, tolumnia etc. It has been shown that odontoglossum and Cochlioda species actually represent very weird goth cousins in the Oncidium family. But since they are so different, it is debated, whether it would be better to shuffle a few species of Oncidium around to make Odontoglossum with Cochlioda a complete family and Oncidium a separate complete family, or to just dump everything into Oncidium. there are also several genera that look a lot like Oncidium, but aren't closely related (Tolumnia is one of them), and had to be split from them. At the end it sometimes just comes to disagreeing at which level we shall split or lump. and it smetimes take scientists a bit to decide which ranks and names fit best into what we know. (NOTE: whenever I refered to group of orchids as a family I did not mean that in scientific sense - all orchids constitute one scientific family, the Orchidaceae, which is then split further into several ranks of smaller and smaller groups, untill we coe to species )
Danny! One of my Phalaenopsis Orchid's Aerial roots are shriveling and dying. What could be the cause of this? (I do not pour fertilizer on the aerial roots / fertilize weakly weekly 13-2-13, use reverse osmosis water and it is not in a clay pot)
I never quite liked the fragrance of the Neofenitia, to me it smelled unpleasant like damp clothes left in the washer if that makes sense. I am very inclined to get the dendrobium parishii or anousmus. I just recently purchased the drandium love memory “Fizz” and the fragrance reminds me of cotton candy when warm and lilacs when it’s cooler.
Hey Danny. I'm a new viewer and i really love your videos. Recently i've fall in love with brassavolas and their hybrids. I have about 4 plants and only one of them flower every year. Can you give me some tips on how to get them blooming ? I fertilize once a week and they are healthy plants with no pests and disease.
From what I've read, Brassavolas prefer light similar to Cattleyas, and an otherwise healthy Cattleya will often refuse to bloom if not given enough light (mind you, direct sun can burn the leaves of Cattleyas - I know from experience). But let's see what Danny says. :)
I have a brass w 3 new pseudo bulbs/ leaves growing and u give it Vanda lighting . I water ever couple of weeks and let it soak over night . But my climate is cool costal so my watering schedule might b different than yours
Hello I recently purchased a Twinkle and a Sodoanum. The seller sent them in bloom but they have absolutely no fragrance. Do you have any thoughts as to why? Thank you
Perfect, I was looking for a fragrant orchid, I got a phalanopsis hybrid that has a delicate scent andi want more! I'm in a cool, humid enviroment tho, with limited space so my options are limited
Do you know anything about "Anthura Orchids"? I bought a mini white phal because the whole order of white minis all had 4+ spikes with branches (and they only have 6-8 leaves), some of the spikes were terminal, coming from under the top leaf, a bunch of wild flower spikes. *But* I couldn't find any info on Anthura orchids except for the company information on their site. I want to know the genealogy of this phal because it flowers like crazy! Do you know anything about Anthura? (P.S. I took pictures to send to you)
I think the O. sotoanum is also the parent of my Aliceara Tahitian Dancer. Not sure if Aliceara is even a thing anymore. LOL. Mine smells like honey. Do you still have the tahitian dancer? I remember you made a video on it.
I have the Maxillaria tenuifolia, which smells like coconuts. It's not a small orchid, though. The pseudobulbs are held high and the grasslike foliage makes the plant even taller.
Btw, I have a hybrid of Laelia pumila, Cattleya shroderae and laelia alaori that is very fragrant of something powdery. It is definitely a miniature and is barely 4 inches tall. My wife and a few other people hate the scent; it reminds them of mildew. It doesn't read like that to me though it registers as soap to my nose.
Thank you for ALL your vidds. We're just started keeping orchids and your vids are very informative and it's easy to listen to your voice
I would love to see a video on low light orchids you could grow in an office!
Thank you for making these videos. I've only recently become an orchid hobbyist, and your videos are by far the most educational and accessible for beginners, while still having expert knowledge that I know I'll appreciate as I become more experienced.
I have a mini Cattleya that is extremely fragrant. She has a citrus floral fragrance. It’s a lovely “blue” color too. I love mine. She’s a LC Mini Purple ‘Blue Hawaii’.
This video was so useful for someone with limited space and a love for fragrant flowers. It saved me so much time researching. Thank you VERY much!! Would love to see more videos like this if you have any other recommendations!!
6:34 this reminded me of the time i sniffed cattleyas at a store i worked at at the time and one smelled like Lillie's but had a rubbery undertone.
My absolute favorite orchid (currently at least!) is a fragrant mini, the Gastrochilus Retrocalla! Half inch fringed yellow flowers with a lemony scent, it’s adorable and smells great!
Thank you! I really enjoyed this video and the oncidium twinkle in yellow is just precious!!!
I love your videos! I am learning so much about orchids from you and my passion for orchids grows with every video. Your explanations are eloquent and enjoyable. Keep up the good work!! I look forward to learning more from you.
Some of these wil definitely be on my wish list.
I highly recommend Cattleya mossiae as well as Cattleya lueddemanniana. It can get big though.
Cute collection! Several wild orchids that I've sniffed all have this faint sweet, vanilla-like fragrance
Walkeriana smells great.
Enjoyable video! I had a Cattleya mossiae that smelled like hyacinths. I do not remember anything unpleasant about it. I recently got a Maxillaria tenuifolia, which has that characteristic coconut fragrance. My mom describes it as subtle, but I can smell it before entering the room.
Kim Bruun Dreyer
Kim Bruun Dreyer I
2:44 is that a miniature of Sherry baby? I used to be able to find those from time to time but have not seen them for years and loved their appearance and their smell which only appeared at different times of the day, was not able to keep them alive long-term unlike some of my Cactus and succulents which I've had for 30 years, but pretty plant, that first plant with the fringy flowers at the beginning look like a parent or related to Sherry baby also, what was its name? Thank you
I love twinkles ❤
I would like to see a video about foul smelling orchids, although I guess most of them would be from the Bulbophyllum genus.
Great video!
A lot of Bulbophyllum don,t smell good.
Hey Danny! I was wondering if you have any tips on identifying orchids that were purchased at grocery stores, or gifted to me by friends that came without labels. I have many Oncidiums, fragrant and non-fragrant, from tiny size flowers, to flowers the size of a digestif biscuit. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!
Hey there, can you give me the name of the orchid you showed at the beginning? It was so stunning and I saw this in one of your videos but couldnt find it anymore. Such a unique species!
I also wondered, it has a similar but much more exotic appearance than Sherry baby which is the only orchid I could find years ago that consistently smelled, it did at odd times, sometimes it did smell and sometimes not, but the same colors and patterning on the flowers
Thank you for making this video! Another small orchid for it could be maxillaria variabilis.
You are going to love the Cattleya Walkeriana. I had a hybrid of it crossed with Cattleya labiata and it smelled like vanilla mixed with some kind of chemical underlayer. That underlayer kind of reminded of mothballs but regardless my wife and dog wanted to eat the blooms.
I regrett to say that I no longer own this plant because I decided to get another walkeriana hybrid that didn't have mutant blooms with extra petals and sex organs. Every bloom was different from the next and quite monstrously deformed.
Judging by the leaves, you have Ang leonis Comoros variety, so it will grow quite bigger than the Madagascar version of it, leaves are less fleshy and it requires more water to thrive vs the super succulent leaves of the Madagascar one, in case you wanted to know :P
I would add to this list tuberolabium, such as Tuberolabium kotoense or quisumbinguii. They dont grow very big and they produce tiny blooms that pack a punch of fragrance for the size.
Nice list regardless :)
Correct me if im wrong, but I recall you having a dendrobium speciosum. Could you do an update on it and some care tips? I just got one and it's in pretty rough shape.
Dani, Since you mentioned the name change on the Sedeia japonica's name I wonder if in a Q & A video you could mention something about why orchids undergo name changes? Who initiates it? Is it scientifically based? Thanks for another interesting video.
Pat Sfreund I would watch this video! I hope she does it. 🤞🏽
Yes, It's scientifically based. many many orchids and especially orchid genera were described in the 19. century and in the beginning of the 20. century, when the understanding of how species form wasn't as well understood and not as well testable, since there were little to none methods of working with DNA sequences and the only thing to indicate whether a certain orchid belonged to a genus or not was how it looked like - which is generally OK, but in some cases proves very diffcult or unreliable, because you group orchids together on how they look, not by if they are really related.
Because it was hard to tell in some groups which are related or not, the splitting of genera was somewhat arbitrary at times, some species landed in wrong genera altogether, or, some groups were split into too many small genera (many realtives of Vandas), while other large groups were placed into giant unmanageable and uninformative genera (like Dendrobiums- when growing a Dendrobium, you always have to know which type of them you have, as they grow radically different from eachother, because they are only distantly related, and Pleurothallis, which is the largest genus ever made and holds practically no information except thet the species in it are Pleurothallids).
This is why taxonomists and botanists in recent years, with advances in molecular biology (however, DNA sequences and their overusage without supporting morphological data can also be misleading) and better understanding of speciation, make corrections to these old systems - to make genera, that hold more information about relatedness and biology of the species within - often these changes carry some value for (hobby) growers, because members of the genus usually require similar (not the same) care, or look alike. many other times it holds little to no value to hobby growers and it just changes the names. what is important: usally the name change doesn't make the old names wrong, and it is not wrong to use them - they are synonyms: words that mean the same. It is however desirable to use the "correct" name in scientific works, but for hobbyists it doesn't matter whether you write Sedirea or Phalaenopsis on the tag - if you get confused, there are interenet pages with lists of synonyms (the plant list), and you just tye in the species and it spouts out all the synonyms (it is however not updated every year...)
This next paragraph is relating as to what kin of groups the scientists are trying to make:
When we are grouping the species together, it is like trying to pick out a family you do not know from a group of people
Generally it is considered best to have all descendands of the last common ancestor grouped in one greoup (goes for all ranks - the order family, genus etc. - this is just the scale at which you look at the same thing) , in human terms, we consider family everyone that has the same great-grandmother (and let's say for genus the same grandmother, but is now not really important). And generally , family members look similar - if we go back to orchids- orchids constitute a nice family - an ancestor had certain qualities (reduction of number of anthers to 3 or less, mostly even to one, one petal trasformed into a lip...) that now all orchids share and are now very easily recognisable as a family. - same as a human family with a strong trait - like the shape of the nose, which all family members have. A family (or genus) like that is easy to recognize and pick out.
Now back to the humans analogy - most families look kinda similar, but often one (some) person (let's say the goth cousin, with his nose shape less prominent (but still there), different haircolour...) looks radically different than everybody else - if someone who does not know the family (let's call them Johnsons), he will easily pick out all the cousins except the goth one, because he is so different. And the family would not be complete - in systematic we call that a paraphyletic group - we indetified some members of the family but others were left out. The Sedirea japonica is the goth cousin in the Phalaenopsis "family" - it loooks a bit different than the rest of them, but is actually a part of the genus - so Phalaenopses are not complete without the Sedirea japonica
In some rare cases family members dont look alike, they lack good defining features, and someone that does not know them can't put them well together from a group of people - and he assembles a family solely by how similar he feels the people look - this is resulting in a polyphyletic group - and that's what happened when scinetists in 19. century tried to classify orchids - they put everything in very few genera (at one point, they classified everything that growed epiphytically and Epidendrum, which is clearly not the best option), which wouldn't be useful and didn't reflect the similarities.
In this analogy i put the limit of the family at all that had the same great-grandmother (grand mother for genus) - that's 4 generations. In biology we are talking about 1000s of generations and things often aren't as clear - it isn't clear where the limit for genus - Example: the group of orchids, containing Oncidium, Odontoglossum, Cochlioda, Brassia, Miltonia, Miltoniopsis, tolumnia etc. It has been shown that odontoglossum and Cochlioda species actually represent very weird goth cousins in the Oncidium family. But since they are so different, it is debated, whether it would be better to shuffle a few species of Oncidium around to make Odontoglossum with Cochlioda a complete family and Oncidium a separate complete family, or to just dump everything into Oncidium. there are also several genera that look a lot like Oncidium, but aren't closely related (Tolumnia is one of them), and had to be split from them.
At the end it sometimes just comes to disagreeing at which level we shall split or lump. and it smetimes take scientists a bit to decide which ranks and names fit best into what we know.
(NOTE: whenever I refered to group of orchids as a family I did not mean that in scientific sense - all orchids constitute one scientific family, the Orchidaceae, which is then split further into several ranks of smaller and smaller groups, untill we coe to species )
Try to treat your neofinita falcata like a dendrobium nobile it use to help for blooming
Finally, I have a species name for two of my orchids! Thank you so much for your videos, they're incredibly helpful!
What is the orchid at the beginning with the long whiskers?
Do you know any fragrant orchid bloom multiple times a year? thanks!
Danny! One of my Phalaenopsis Orchid's Aerial roots are shriveling and dying. What could be the cause of this? (I do not pour fertilizer on the aerial roots / fertilize weakly weekly 13-2-13, use reverse osmosis water and it is not in a clay pot)
I never quite liked the fragrance of the Neofenitia, to me it smelled unpleasant like damp clothes left in the washer if that makes sense. I am very inclined to get the dendrobium parishii or anousmus. I just recently purchased the drandium love memory “Fizz” and the fragrance reminds me of cotton candy when warm and lilacs when it’s cooler.
I have a cymbidium iridioides which I find is very fragrant. Any tips for growing it?
Hey Danny. I'm a new viewer and i really love your videos. Recently i've fall in love with brassavolas and their hybrids. I have about 4 plants and only one of them flower every year. Can you give me some tips on how to get them blooming ? I fertilize once a week and they are healthy plants with no pests and disease.
From what I've read, Brassavolas prefer light similar to Cattleyas, and an otherwise healthy Cattleya will often refuse to bloom if not given enough light (mind you, direct sun can burn the leaves of Cattleyas - I know from experience). But let's see what Danny says. :)
I have a brass w 3 new pseudo bulbs/ leaves growing and u give it Vanda lighting . I water ever couple of weeks and let it soak over night . But my climate is cool costal so my watering schedule might b different than yours
I wonder what orchid doesn't bloom once a year. Would that be a good topic for a video?
Dawid Skarbek do you mean an orchid that blooms MORE than once a year?
Do you have any cymbidiums? I don't remember seeing any on your channel. If not, why?
I have a cattleya forbesii (species) that smells like candy. Great video!
hi, I want to have Cat Forbessii, may i ask is it hard to bloom. I live in Toronto. Thanks.
Hi ! Do you know the full name of your GORGEOUS dark pink Oncidium Twinkle ?
Hello
I recently purchased a Twinkle and a Sodoanum. The seller sent them in bloom but they have absolutely no fragrance. Do you have any thoughts as to why?
Thank you
Angraecum didieri is small with a strong but pleasant fragrance.
My vanda falcata attempted to bloom for me this year but halfway through it died back :(
Perfect, I was looking for a fragrant orchid, I got a phalanopsis hybrid that has a delicate scent andi want more! I'm in a cool, humid enviroment tho, with limited space so my options are limited
Cool and humid... hm... perfect for miltoniopsis? Most are Very fragrant. I am actually suffering from fragrance overload right now.
Do you know anything about "Anthura Orchids"? I bought a mini white phal because the whole order of white minis all had 4+ spikes with branches (and they only have 6-8 leaves), some of the spikes were terminal, coming from under the top leaf, a bunch of wild flower spikes. *But* I couldn't find any info on Anthura orchids except for the company information on their site. I want to know the genealogy of this phal because it flowers like crazy!
Do you know anything about Anthura? (P.S. I took pictures to send to you)
I think the O. sotoanum is also the parent of my Aliceara Tahitian Dancer. Not sure if Aliceara is even a thing anymore. LOL. Mine smells like honey. Do you still have the tahitian dancer? I remember you made a video on it.
Hi Danny. Mmmmmm. Raspberries. My orchid is smaller than yours 🤣 but don’t have scent.
Haha, transform into monster !!
Amazing! I was wondering did the orchid giveaway happened?
Some orchids you show need a lot of humidity, direct sun and a good ventilation for no burning leaves.
How about Maxillarias?
I have the Maxillaria tenuifolia, which smells like coconuts. It's not a small orchid, though. The pseudobulbs are held high and the grasslike foliage makes the plant even taller.
Btw, I have a hybrid of Laelia pumila, Cattleya shroderae and laelia alaori that is very fragrant of something powdery. It is definitely a miniature and is barely 4 inches tall.
My wife and a few other people hate the scent; it reminds them of mildew. It doesn't read like that to me though it registers as soap to my nose.
My twinkles smell like vanilla cookies........I really don't like vanilla cookies ;-)