Denevei buds are opening up

Bel X Bel = blue ?

These 2 bellinas one from malaysia and one from taiwan both have genes from a bellina blue mother plant.  I am going to try and cross them and see if the recessive genes show up in the seedlings. It ptobably wont be this easy but you never know what nature can come up with  !  Although their colours are even and intense, they don't show as well in photos.

Para denevei in bloom

Saw this spike when watering yesterday. Last 2 selfing was not successful although pollination was successful and there were seedpods. They never quite made it to maturity. Maybe I will be third time lucky.

Bellina "chen" salad

My seedlings became caterpillar food. Its usually the more leafy philodendron or heliconias that gets eaten, so pretty surprised to see my seedings get chomped up. This caterpillar have good taste too picking on my Phal bellina " chen" seedlings.

Bloomed and pollinated. Now we wait !

The flower bloomed in the afternoon. I use a small watercolour paint brush to try pollination.

Peyotes are ready for repotting

I have been wanting to repot my peyotes for some time but the catcus potting sand have been sold out and not available currently. Found a bud this morning on one of them. I have previously succeeded in pollinating and harvesting and germinating seeds from cactus and succulents so this will be a project. I have added last year's photo to show how much they have grown in their current 5 and 6 inch pots over 12 months. Because they prefer very dry growing conditions, I don't water them regularly maybe once or twice per fortnight depending on the weather and they get their share of fertilisers when I feed my orchids.

Fruit bags

Bought some fruit bags online for the papayas and figs. Hopefully they will be enough to protect against birds and insecte.