Smokey midnight contrasting with cream colors, coupled with an intensely sweet fragrance, summarizes the beauty of Cymbidium sinense ‘Chin Hua Shan’. While this cultivar produces fewer flowers per spike than other Cymbidium sinense, the quality of the blooms more than compensates. It is a fairly compact plant. Also notable is the variegated edging on the leaves, seen below in the second photograph.
The species is wide-ranging, from northern India to Taiwan, including southern China and much of Southeast Asia. The large east-west distribution contributes to the range of flower colors, from the dark chocolate brown like this cultivar to lighter olive-greens and album forms.
We grow Cymbidium sinense outdoors most of the year, and bring them into the cool room under LED lights when temperatures consistently drop below 40F (4C) at night.
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