Phalaenopsis mannii 'black'
SPECIES
This small to just medium sized, warm to cool growing, epiphytic species is found through the eastern Indian Himalayas, Assam, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Myanmar, southern China and Vietnam as a pendulous growing epiphyte at elevations of 500 to 1500 meters in humid broadleafed evergreen forests with dense undergrowth near streams and rivers on rough barked trees even though there is not much falling rain. They are best grown slabbed on cork or tree fern because of their pendant growth habit with a short stem enveloped by imbricating leaf bases carrying 4 to 5, oblong-oblanceolate to oblong-ligulate, shiny, fleshy, acute, medium green leaves. They like shady areas with high humidity and a distinctly drier winter rest that helps initiate spring blooming on a slender, pendulous, to 18" [45 cm] long, racemose or rarely paniculate, laxly many [to 70] flowered inflorescence that is as long as the leaves with small ovate-lanceolate bracts with fragrant, waxy, long-lived flowers appearing in succesion.