Caradoc-Davies

Tudor Caradoc-Davies

The first Disa grower that we met during our journey to New Zealand is perhaps the world's most southern grower of Disas, growing them at almost 46 degrees south. Dr. Tudor Caradoc-Davies is a former South African who obviously brought a love for his country's most beautiful orchid with him. He resides in a suburb of Dunedin which is situated on a bluff of the Otago Peninsula overlooking Otago Bay.

A spectacular view! Since he has many interests, his cultivation of Disas pretty much follows the GOD system (Grow Or Die). He grows in insulated flats placed on the ground inside 4 hoop greenhouses measuring about 8 x 19 feet that are left open at one end to allow for air circulation. Due to his location, the weather is very much moderated by the proximity of the ocean and he neither heats, nor takes any special care to control the temperature of the plants. His approach to potting would make must of us shudder. He repots into moistened peat moss over a base of pebbles. (That's right, the stuff most of us affectionately refer to as MUD). He emphasizes that during repotting, he only loosely fills the pot and doesn't attempt to pack it down at all. He uses 3 1/2" square pots that are 4 1/4" deep. He related an incident where he hired a college student to do some of his repotting and the student carefully packed the pots tight. He discovered the error when the plants all started to crump! He waters with tap water which had a TDS reading of 100 and a pH of 8. We visited slightly ahead of his main blooming season but the plants looked good and many were in spike. (In retrospect, we probably should have started in the North and made our way South to artificially extend the blooming season but due to the fact that there were limited times when we could hike the Milford Track, we had to start at the South and work northward). Since most of his plants were not yet in flower, I emailed him and asked if he could provide any pictures with the flowers open. He did so and his photos in the following pictorial are marked with his name. He does some hybridization with unifloras mainly and sends the greenpods to Ron Maunder to sow in flasks. Unfortunately for me, the tags were all marked with numbers and didn't tell either what the cross was or the breeding history. As a result, the captions on some of the following pictures don't help us much. He does have some really nice flowers that would be useful for breeding stock though. In the pictures of the individual flowers below, be sure and note the flat lateral sepals. This is definitely something to breed for and he has a goodly number of plants like that! I'm sitting here kicking myself for not getting any pollen but I think the reason was that I wasn't sure of the parentage.

One view from the front lawn of his estate. Super!	A view from his dining area.
Two of his four hoop houses and a shade structure that he also uses for growing plants.
The other two hoop houses are more shaded.
A view of the back of one hoop house in mid February.
This shows what the inside of a hoop house looks like around the third week of February	This shows the same hoop house on the 4th of January. Note all the spikes that will bloom about 6 weeks later.
	The photo to the left shows some of the detail of his growing technique. Note that in NZ, they have a problem with liverwort growing on the pot tops. In the US, I have a similar problem with various mosses.
A detail shot of one of his pots showing how compacted the peat moss layer gets. The bottom half of the pot is filled with washed pebbles.	Some of the individual blooms. Note the flat LS.
	To the left is a nicely colored flower that I believe has a Veitchii background. The flower above was nicely presented and had good color.
	Four more blooms surround this caption. The lower left is especially nicely colored and has very fine shape. The LS's are more rounded and held very flat. Now if we only knew what it was!

This is one of the other demands upon Tudor's time. A really nicely presented English Garden. Makes one definitely consider the possibility of moving to New Zealand.