Disa atricapilla

[fredg]

A winter growing Disa, it requires a dry summer rest. The buds seem to take forever to open. One not to grow in a Sarracenia lagoon.

[peterhewitt]

wow Fred, that is stunning. do you dry the soil out completely in summer? From whence exactly does it hail?

[fredg]

I'm just going by these.

A medium sized, cool to cold growing terrestrial with a corymbose flower arrangement from South Africa in montane seepage ares an damp localities at elevations of sea level to 2000 meters with cauline, linear-lanceolate, basally concentrated leaves where it blooms in the summer. This plant needs a dry period through the late spring and summer to keep the plant healthy.

Disa atricapilla is a winter rainfall species from 5-30 cm that grows in marshy places on flats and slopes from the Western Cape to the Karoo Mountain area (Cederberg Mountains to the Cape Peninsula to the Swartberg Mountains). Flowers are multicolored: white, red and black. This species blooms late spring to summer.

[fredg]

A little update. Three open and four to go.

[fredg]

Still another three to open

[fredg]

Almost there.

[grackle]

How something like that evolves... the mind boggles. That is a long bloom period too.

[Yaron]

Looks a bit like Anubis ;-)

[fredg]

here's the ful house, nearly a month to get top this stage.

[fredg]

41 days after the first flower opened it's still looking good. What has happened since the last flower opened is that the flowers have begun to separate vertically.

Please excuse image quality, it's windy out there (and the spiderlings have been busy).


Now I need to ask how I'm supposed to give it a dry late spring/summer rest when it's in full flower and seed production?