Brassada Orange Delight ‘Hilo Sunrise’

This lovely little spider orchid in orange has a quirky flowering habit.  Although the individual flowers don’t last very long, maybe a week or two, the flower spike can last up to six to eight weeks.  As you can see in the photos the flowers come out progressively along the spike, so as the first flowers are opening the spike is still growing and putting on flower buds at the tip of the spike.  The flowers will then slowly open along the spike with the older flowers dying off behind them.  You don’t get that full flowering effect like other varieties that open all at once, but you do get quite a long flowering time from one spike.

Orange Delight isn’t a big plant but it is a prolific grower and regularly forms quite a robust clump after only a few years.  It doesn’t like being out in the rain and having wet foliage at night which is quite contrary to some of it’s Brassia parentage.  Another quirk of Orange Delight is it doesn’t like being too moist, but it doesn’t like drying out either.  We find a really well drained mix works well where Orange Delight is watered each morning but then allowed to dry out a bit by the afternoon, then repeated the following day during the warmer months.  Orange Delight also loves plenty of humidity, so the pot in pot technique that keeps the humidity high around the plant will assist growing it.

Another quality of Orange Delight is that it doesn’t seem to have a specific flowering season, or any limitations to it’s spike generation, unlike some of it’s Brassia parentage.  We have noted Orange Delight flowering practically every month of the year in our production batches.  As you can see in the photos Orange Delight really doesn’t need staking, as the flowers are best displayed on the long arching spikes that are self supporting.