Cimorene

I told Wax that I wanted a dark red or purple orchid, and she picked this one out when she went to the store for baking supplies on Friday. It's a third Phalaenopsis, and it gives every sign of being in great health, but we still repotted it because they all seem to come from the nursery with a dense pellet of moss or coconut fiber or something in the center of the pot, and those lead to root rot. This orchid only had a couple of dead roots, though, and the potting medium it was in was extremely fresh. It also showed signs of recent surgery - a couple of cut surfaces with antifungal visible on them - so it probably had a problem that was treated shortly before it was sold to the grocery store.



So meet Ella Fitzgerald! I tried to identify the varieties of all these orchids by image search, and it was pretty much... well, not impossible, but it would've taken a lot more time and effort and closeup examinations of all the flower parts. So I didn't do that, but I did sort of look at some pictures and pick one that looked the right color that I liked. That variety was called Montreux, so she's named Ella Fitzgerald, who has a great live at Montreux jazz festival album. All three phalaenopses got moved into the livingroom next to the west-facing window because it's gotten too chilly on the porch where they had been previously basking in light from every direction but north. The fourth picture is color-corrected to show the way it appears in real life better: our camera phones couldn't get a good color reproduction. Bright magentas are hard for cameras, I guess.