Have you ever seen a large orchid?
Last year we counted the number of flowers on our biggest orchid, “Oncidium sphacelatum”. This is locally known as Shower of Gold or Dancing Ladies. There were 4,576 flowers blooming at the same time.
A year later, we did count again and were astonished to find out that the same orchid gave us 11,310 flowers blooming at the same time on the same orchid!
You would never guess how we got this amazing orchid plant! We found it few years ago chopped off a tree, lying on the ground, during the clearing of the old trees near the highway, so we picked it up and brought it here.
Have you ever tasted Vanilla Sugar?
During your visit to the Botanical Garden you can see and taste our first Vanilla Brown Sugar. The vanilla bean was harvested a couple weeks ago and was mixed with brown sugar so that the flavors can combine to produce sweet vanilla flavored brown sugar. A Vanilla Orchid is a beautiful plant when it is blooming and it tastes delicious when it produces the pods.
We have so many orchids here at Ian Anderson’s Caves Branch. We have one of the largest collections in Belize! You can visit our site to read more about the botanical gardens at Caves Branch. Also, you can follow another link to a website that has information and pictures of a part of nature at the lodge that some people seem to overlook.
