Pretty picture: Miltoniopsis Morris Chestnut

Miltoniopsis come from Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, Columbia and Ecuador. There's a fair amount of agreement that they're not particularly easy orchids to grow, since they require high humidity (one site said minimum of 55-65% humidity), and the watering appears to be difficult to get right. The flowers are pretty, obviously. I like this one better than the previous Miltoniopsis, but they're all nice, really. Supposedly the flowers have a rose-like fragrance, though it was basically impossible to check fragrances at the orchid show last March -- too hard to get close to the plants, the air was swirling all over the place, there were lots of other people there, quite a few of whom had their own fragrances -- so I can't actually confirm this.

There is no chance I will ever own one of these, though I think they are pretty, because one is never ever supposed to let these dry out. Every plant I own will, sooner or later, get completely dry. I mean, I try to keep them all happy, but I do miss waterings sometimes. This is just a fact, and I accept it. I may be seeing them more often in the stores, though: my ex-job had a couple around not too long ago, and I'd never seen them there previously. Granted, I think that's the only place I've seen them for sale in a regular everyday retail kind of setting (there were vendors at Wallace's selling them, when we visited), but if they were cheap enough and available enough for us to get them, then they have to be cheap enough and available enough that other places could get them too. I'll have to try to check on this rose-like fragrance thing, next time I see one.