Brazilian Miltonias can be grown right along with your Cattleya hybrids and Oncidiums. They tolerate the same light intensity, although they can be grown with much less light. Normally, Brazilian Miltonia have quite yellowish leaves. It is typical for someone encountering these for the first time to be concerned about the yellowish leaves. Well, it's normal! If they are grown under light intensities significantly lower than those for Cattleyas or Oncidiums, the leaves become much darker green. Indeed, treat these like Oncidiums or Cattleyas and you should find them thriving for you, Problems are few. Mealy bugs like them and aphids are sometimes seen on flower buds. From my experience, 70% isopropyl alcohol is as safe and effective an insecticide as you will find. Just spray it on undiluted, straight from the rubbing alcohol bottle. Perhaps the worst problem is the die back seen on older leaf tips. I suspect this is a result of fertilising too often or too heavily, resulting in a salt deposit in the leaf tips, This deposit kills the cells in the apex of the leaves, leading to infections by bacteria and fungi. Keep the dead leaf tips cut off, and your problems should be minimal. However, two words of caution are necessary. First, these need a lot of water when they are actively growing. They are much more like Colombian miltonias than Cattleyas in this respect. Their roots are quite fine and thrive in fine compost, similar to what you would use for Oncidiums. Fertilize as you would for Cattleyas or Oncidiums. Second, with a few notable exceptions, such as Miltonia schroederiana, Miltonia candida and Miltonia warscewiczii, these produce unreasonably long internodes, with the result that the plats literally traverse the diameter of a pot in one growing season. It becomes very difficult to grow these into even small specimen plants in regular pots, because a plant with five pseudobulbs might need a pot 10 inches across. This is particularly a problem with Miltonia spectabilis and its hybrids. The solution to this mess is simple, don't use pots. Mount them on cork or else put them into baskets!
