For this month, I feature a hybrid between Coelogyne fragrans and Coelogyne speciosa. I got this plant in November 2015. It was quite a young division at the time, but it grew quite quickly and this is its second flowering for me. The overall habit of the plant is very much like Coelogyne speciosa, but maybe with a slightly longer rhizome and a slightly more slender pseudobulb. It seems to have inherited its parents’ vigour, and has already produced a second lead growth. One of the major criticisms I often hear about Coelogyne speciosa is that the flowers point downward (to keep the heavy rains of its native habitat out of the centre of the flower, thus preventing self-pollination), although I don’t mind this at all. The hybrid has inherited the somewhat thicker and more upright flower spikes of Coelogyne fragrans and could probably be staked upright if so desired. I prefer to allow them to arch naturally. It enjoys the warm humid conditions that I provide for it, but I suspect it would do quite well on a window sill. The flowers are quite large at around 6.5cm diameter, and only 1 cm smaller than my largest speciosa flower, and flowering periods often overlap so that there is usually more than one flower open at a time. They would probably be a little wider still but for the fact that the petals sweep backwards and cross over behind the flower. The plant is still quite young and it is possible that the flowers will get a little larger still as the plant gains in size and strength. It is a sequential bloomer, so I don’t know what the final flower count will be, but there is already an improvement over the last flowering (I got two flowers). The scent is not strong, and this may be a blessing, as some clones of Coelogyne speciosa have quite an unpleasant scent and the genes of that species tend to be dominant in its hybrids.