Stanhopea wardii

As the summer Stanhopea season winds down, I'm continuing to photograph our collection for our image library. They are beautiful. The shiny black eyespots are wardii's calling card -most (but not all) plants have them. This accession of Stanhopea wardii has a burnt orange and yellow hypochile. It smells strongly of cineole (camphor).

Above, I've removed the sepals and petals, leaving just the broadly winged column, lip and pedicel.

The lip and pedicel after I've removed the column.

Stanhopea wardii ranges south of Honduras, from Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama to Colombia and Venezuela, where it grows as an epiphyte at 800 to 1600 meters elevation in humid cloud forests -a good candidate for an intermediate (60º night minimum) greenhouse.