The Lightning Bolt Orchid’s Leaves Steal the Show
Lightning bolt orchid (image credit: Udo Schroter via Wikimedia, CC 4.0)
The striking leaves of the lightning bolt orchid (Macodes petola) steal the show with their vibrant, gold-veined patterns, making this jewel orchid a standout in both residential and office plant designs.
Orchids are known for their colorful, showy blooms, so it’s not too often that an orchid’s flowers get upstaged by its leaves. However, that happens to be the case for macodes petola, also known as the lightning bolt orchid.
Macodes petola is a type of jewel orchid, and while I’d never tell my other jewel orchids this, it’s my number one stunner. The patterns on the leaves, which look like Mother Nature stitched them there with fine gold thread, look exactly like zig-zagging lightning bolts. This is one of those plants one looks at and thinks, “how?!”
Most jewel orchids are native to southeast Asia, and the lightning bolt orchid specifically comes from islands such as Vanuatu, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Japan’s Ryukyu Islands. Like other jewel orchids, lightning bolts are terrestrial, which means they grow in the soil, rather than on trees. Given that they live on the ground and are largely covered by canopy, they require less light than most epiphytic orchids. They appreciate the dappled or filtered sunlight that reaches a forest floor.
lightning bolt orchid in my greenhouse.
I bought my lightning bolt orchid about four years ago. Even though I’ve kept it in my greenhouse cabinet, it took a while to figure out how to make this plant really thrive, rather than just survive. Jewel orchids are relatively slow growers, but mine has finally grown enough that I split it into three smaller plants so I could experiment even more with growing conditions. I have one in a terrarium with ferns and mosses, and the other two are on two different levels of my greenhouse so I can observe which one does better.
A few weeks ago, I noticed a stem growing from one of them, which had never happened before. Sure enough, I got flowers! Blooms are wonderful validation for any grower, and in this case I was particularly curious to see what they’d look like. Turns out they’re teeny tiny, adorable little things that don’t last particularly long.
lightning bolt orchid in my greenhouse
Sometimes it’s not clear why a plant bloomed at a particular time, but in this case, I think the lightning bolt orchid responded to the new, full-spectrum grow lights I installed in the greenhouse a little while ago. Grow lights aren’t as intense as the sun, and my jewel orchids enjoy being under them for ~10 hours a day as long as they’re about 6 inches away (or shaded a little bit by a taller plant). I think that extra boost of sun might’ve induced the blooming in this case, along with an established, consistent routine involving high humidity (~80%), frequent watering, and monthly phosphorus-heavy fertilization.
I may recombine my two greenhouse lightning bolt orchids into one wide, shallow pot. Jewel orchids tend not to root deeply and they crawl over the soil surface, so my next experiment will be to see how giving them room to crawl affects their growth and bloom cycles. No matter what, the leaves will remain the jewels of this stunning plant.
close up of flowers
