Hey WC, I can only relay my experience with this plant. It has flowered at random times for me, always during warm weather (okay, that's about 10 months of the year). We probably do get a temperature drop in summer when it rains, but we're talking dropping from 95F to 88F, so that isn't "cool" by anybody's estimation. It sure does grow like a weed; mine started out as a couple of stalks, now I have it on three different mounts. It gets a whole line of keikis along the inflorescence sometimes. I'm pretty sure that it forms buds repeatedly from the same nodes, too. And it can hold those buds for months before blooming (whenever the stars align just right). You might try flooding it with water for awhile, see if that will trigger it. If anybody has some ideas that might work, I'm game! Cheers - Nancy

I'm glad to be right for once! You are right, though, this is a really appealing plant - gets sort of wild and snarly looking, but the flowers are always such a delight. And it doesn't have a season, just randomly as the weather fluctuates. Cheers - Nancy

Just a little bit more.... Perhaps this orchid is really Gillian Leaney x Gai Ellen x Red River x Gillieston. Don't know where the brackets go, but they are needed to work out the order of crossing because the order determines the name in the RHS Database. Why bother growing these orchids? Because you should get a mass of sweetly scented flowers in spring. Why is it not producing the goods? Lack of light. There are some, on average, 300 sunny days spread evenly throughout the year here. Lack of a winter. That means something like 7 to 17C daily spread of temperature on an average winter day. Brrrr. Lol. but hard to achieve if you have your plants indoors because it is freezing outside. To much water and continuous humidity. It usually rains or the sun shines and if the wind is blowing from the interior of the continent, the humidity can be quite low. Not many cloudy dreary days with just a drizzle. To sum up. Perhaps these should be avoided because of a winter cool down necessary which might be hard to provide if you have to take the plant indoors over winter. More info. can be found in Wilford Neptune's kingianum culture notes. Not kingianum, but it is an ancestor in some of the above hybrids used to produce this plant.

Arthur, I too wonder at the changes that have been made fairly recently in the orchid family. It seems to me that we had a system that worked fairly well, even though it contained a number of obvious imperfections. Now, hopefully after considerable thought by those much more knowledgeable about these things than me, we have a new system that may work fairly well, even though it contains a number of obvious imperfections. At my age, and station in life, I am resolved NOT to get all steamed up over this matter. I'll do my best to keep it all straight, but when I mess up and revert back to something that is no longer "politically or botanically correct" I'll have reverted back, and all the folks out there will either have to accept it for what it is, or not. I find it interesting that the RHS and the AOS have remained as civil toward one another as they have for as long as they have. We humans are a peculiar bunch of birds sometimes, aren't we? OH, we aren't birds (although we do fly)......MY bad! ☺ Bill