Anguloa cliftonii

The most elegant Tulip Orchid in our collection is Anguloa cliftonii. The lovely curvature of the lateral sepals make it instantly recognizable. Just visible between the pale yellow sepals are two red-marbled petals that are a shade lighter in color.

Not only is it one of the loveliest anguloas, it's also one of the heftiest. A mature plant can produce a pair of leaves that are two feet long atop a five inch pseudobulb. As you can see, the new shoot on our plant gives promise of massive growth later in the season.

Anguloa cliftonii

Even if it weren't scented like an ice cream sundae, this pale yellow tulip orchid with red marbled petals and gracefully curved sepals would still be one of our most striking species. But best of all is what's hidden inside.

As I unwrapped the layers of sepals and petals, the sight of the lip actually made me laugh.

All anguloas have a hinged lip to facilitate pollination, but cliftonii's lip has something special in the way of ornamentation.

The lip is a miniature bowl with flared edges, and its ornate apex arches backwards as Henry Oakeley writes in his book Lycaste, Ida and Anguloa, "like the handle of a ewer." Ewer?

That sent me on a Google search. Above is the lip rotated 180º and flipped horizontally, looking like a tiny pitcher with a handle, a ewer. How cool is that?

The apex of the lip is the source of the fragrance, which is highly attractive to at least one species of Euglossine bees. It is angled toward the column, so that the bee's weight causes it to tilt toward the anther cap and pollinarium. Upon contact the pollinarium is attached to the bee's abdomen.

Our tulip orchids are off to a slow start this summer, but I expect there will be many for you to see in the Orchid Display House in July. They are wonderful!

A Vanilla Scented Tulip Orchid

Vanilla was not what I was expecting to smell yesterday when watering the Anguloa bench. If anything, I would have expected some foetid smells from the adjacent Nepenthes, quietly digesting their insect soup. Vanilla just isn't a fragrance I associate with Tulip Orchids. But no mistake, a little searching among the big accordion pleated leaves brought me to this guy, Anguloa cliftonii. At close range the fragrance was the familiar camphor/cineole common to many Euglossine bee fragrances, but with sweet overtones of vanilla. This is only the second time we have flowered cliftonii. Either I wasn't paying attention last time, or I caught it at the wrong time of day. What a treat.