https://orchidsociety.com/tags/cool-growing/ Recent content in Cool Growing on Orchid Society Hugo en-us Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://orchidsociety.com/dracula-chimaera-has-150-wild-records-and-13-of-them-are-in-britain/ Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://orchidsociety.com/dracula-chimaera-has-150-wild-records-and-13-of-them-are-in-britain/ There are 150 GBIF records for Dracula chimaera. Colombia holds 66 of them, which is where the plant lives. The United Kingdom holds 13, which is where it does not. Photo: Jhon Fernando Taborda, via GBIF (CC0) Sweden has four. Ireland four between its two country codes. Mexico three, Brazil two, then single records from Belgium, India, Panama and the United States. Add those up and roughly a third of the global record count for this Colombian cloud-forest orchid comes from places it has never grown wild. https://orchidsociety.com/masdevallia-veitchiana-records-cluster-at-machu-picchu-and-one-sits-at-3105-metres/ Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://orchidsociety.com/masdevallia-veitchiana-records-cluster-at-machu-picchu-and-one-sits-at-3105-metres/ Pull the 241 GBIF records for Masdevallia veitchiana and 213 of them are in Peru. Plot the Peruvian ones and they land almost on top of each other, around 13.16 degrees south and 72.54 west, which is the ridge at Machu Picchu. Several were logged by tourists walking the circuit. Photo: Allan Harris, via GBIF (CC0) That concentration is partly real and partly an artefact of who carries a phone up a mountain. https://orchidsociety.com/miltoniopsis-vexillarias-oldest-records-are-greenhouse-plants-in-pittsburgh-and-chicago/ Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://orchidsociety.com/miltoniopsis-vexillarias-oldest-records-are-greenhouse-plants-in-pittsburgh-and-chicago/ The pansy orchid has 245 GBIF records. Colombia accounts for 174 and Ecuador for 25, which matches where the species actually grows. Then the list turns odd: Sweden five, Britain three, Germany two, the United States two, Ireland one. Photo: Guy Babineau, via GBIF (CC0) Open the American ones and the dates are the interesting part. A Carnegie Museum of Natural History sheet collected in 1916, locality Pittsburgh. A Field Museum sheet from 1945, this one genuinely from Caldas in Colombia, collected by K.