Encyclia plicata culture: Caring for a newly purchased plants with few roots

 A few months ago, I brought an Encyclia plicata.  The plant was somewhat dehydrated from its from its journey (it came from an orchid nursery in Jamaica) but otherwise it was in a fairly good shape.   The plant was sold bare root and has very short roots because they were cropped for transportation.  This presents a bit of a challenge, Encyclias that have lost their roots need a high humidity environment to recuperate, and yet in my experience the are intolerant of media that remains wet for a long time.  My sad experience with Cuban Encyclias is that they can rot away if keep too wet.   I have lost Enc moebusi and Enc. Phoenicia.   I think Enc moebusi died from its mount staying wet too long in the climatic chaos after hurricane Maria.  The reasons for the loss of Encyclia phoenicia are not clear.

So, what I have done is I have put the plant in an empty wire basket with no media.  I am lucky that in my locality the climate offers a level of environmental humidity that is good for tropical orchids.  Once or twice a day, depending on the weather, I soak the plant.  In hot, dry, windy weather, I soak it twice a day.  Before soaking, I check it to make sure it is perfectly dry.  For two months the plant stayed inactive.  But in August I saw three basal buds start developing.  Also a few roots have started growing.

 If this one was one of my other Encyclias, I would have put it in a terracotta pot with coarse potting media.  But with this one I plan to keep it in the basket with no media to see how the roots develop.  If all the new growths mature successfully, I might mount it on a tree fern plaque.  This has worked well in the past with Enc alata, Enc bractecens and Enc Borincana.   Or I might decide to fill the basket its in now with large pieces of tree fern.   Given that the plant has a limited quantity of roots, I don’t expect the new growths to reach blooming size but to stay smaller.  Once the new growths they developed a root system, I will decide what to do with it.  

  

Neobenthamia gracilis culture

I lost many orchids in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria.   Most of them were in pots.  So, I decided to plant most of my orchids in baskets to avoid a repeat of that disaster.  Not all plants do well in baskets.   One plant that thrives in a pot is Neobenthamia gracilis.  I decided to experiment how it would do in a basket.   Neobenthamia defies our concept of what an orchid should look like.  A well grown plant looks like an untidy patch of grass.  

I planted a few keikis in a custom-made basket and filled the basket with pieces of coconut husk and a layer of leaf litter.   The keikis grew slowly.   The plant grew and produced new canes at a slow pace.  It eventually produced adult canes that bloomed.  The inflorescences are smaller than those of plants that I had in the past potted in a mix of bark and leaf litter.   The keikis took five years to reach blooming size.   I think that the plant would have taken less time if I had given the basket a top dressing of organic fertilizer.   Although the plant has not done as well as I would have liked, I will keep it in the basket, as a back up in case I lose the other plants.

The root system in the basket is large and its in an excellent condition.  When the plant starts producing keikis I will plant them in pots.  I will keep the mother plant in the basket, just in case.  

 

Ornithocephalus patentilobus C.Schweinf. 1947

 This orchid was photographed at the 2023 Puerto Rico Orchid show at the Caguas botanical gardens.  The plant is mounted and its fan shaped growths hang from the mount.  Its flowers are small and complex.  

Grammatophyllum culture: My experience with plants that have lost their roots

 

The aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria left most people in the island of Puerto Rico scrambling to secure the basic survival needs.  I my case, I was so busy at work, that for many months I could not pay attention to my orchids.   The hurricanes destroyed the forest canopy in my locale.  This produced wildly fluctuating temperature, humidity and light exposure.   Periods of extreme rain alternated with periods of almost no rain.  Many of my orchids could not adapt to the new circumstances and died.   Those that survived often suffered massive root loss.   Among those that lost their roots were my Grammatophyllums of the scriptum and elegans type.  As a result, they became much smaller, some plants divided into small groups of rootless pseudobulbs. 

Normally, Grammatophyllums are tough and resilient, but their tolerance was solely tested after the hurricanes.   To compound the problem the tags of most of them were lost.  So I took the remaining pieces and planted them in a variety of mounts to see in which ones they did better.   I have one advantage most people don’t enjoy, the humidity in my locale normally lies in the range that is good for tropical orchids. 

I planted the pieces I had in four different ways.   One was tied to a wire framework, with nothing else to provide attachment or moisture.  Another was put on a small plastic mesh pot filled with bark.  A third one was put on top of a metal wire basket.  Lastly one was tied to the bottom of a wire basket.  Before I go on, I have to explain what is a root basket.   Grammatophyllum often produces a mass of roots with many roots pointing upwards.  The purpose of these roots is to trap leaves and debris that fall on the plant as a source of moisture and nutrients.  A healthy plant often has a large root basket surrounding its pseudobulbs.  Many people affix their plants to tree fern plaques, or grow them in wooden baskets to allow the roots of the root basket to expand at will.  

 After a few years of care this is the results:  The one that was tied to the metal wire mesh has done better, it’s the one that has the most bulbs and the largest root basket.   On second place came the one on top of a metal wire basket, it produced small bulbs until it reached the edge of the basket, then produced the largest pseudobulb of them all.   Unfortunately, I put this one in a planter and it send a mass of roots into the pot next to it.  I had to rip it from the pot and in the process damaged its root basket, I expect it will recuperate quickly.  On third place is the plant growing attached to the bottom of a wire basket.  It has grown slowly, lost some pseudobulbs to rot and it still hasn’t started producing a root basket.  The piece that is growing on top of the plastic mesh pot filled with bark is the slowest growing of them all.  It only has two relatively small pseudobulbs and its yet to start producing its root basket. 

 From these results, I think it is clear that the Grammatophyllum prefer that their roots not be confined and will do better if their roots can grow at will and are exposed to air.  These plants are heavy feeders and need constant fertilization during their growth cycle for their pseudobulb to attain a large size.  High environmental humidity is extremely important in the case of plants that have lost their roots. 

Dendrobium culture: Dendrobium Mentor 2023 growing season

 

This Dendrobium is a hybrid of Den primulinum and Den anosmum.  This plant is from a remake, the original hybrid was made in 1893.   This plant is attached to the bottom of a custom-made wire basket.  As you must have noted from my posts on orchid culture, I prefer to grow these pendent orchids attached to the bottom of wire baskets.   I do this because when these plants become larger the canes tend to outweigh the pot many times, even when potted in a heavy terracotta pot.  As a result the pots lean to the side, making watering and fertilizer more difficult than usual.   Also these plants are heavy feeders which tends to deteriorate the potting material at an accelerated pace in a pot.  In a wire basket the media stays sopping wet for only brief moments with helps control the bacteria and fungi that destroy potting material.

My plant of Dendrobium Mentor tends to favor the primulinum parent in regards to plant form.  The canes grow almost horizontal, in the direction of the strongest light, until they grow to a size that makes their weight force them into a vertical alignment.   My plant needs heavy fertilizing during the growing season and daily watering to get the best rate of growth.  It also needs strong light.  I have it in a place where it gets full sunlight for a few hours each day between 8 am and 11 am.   In primulinum, the best flowers I have seen were in canes that were exposed to so much sunlight that they were purple.    At this moment, in August, the plant is about halfway to its final size which it will reach December.

 My Dendrobium anosmum plants shed their leaves in December.  I have not paid attention to when Dendrobium Mentor becomes deciduous.  In my garden, this orchid blooms in March or April.  I was slightly disappointed that the two adult canes of my plant bloomed at slightly different times in 2023.  This year the plant has three canes that have the potential to reach blooming size.  The best outcome will be for the to open their flowers all at the same time.  This orchid produces a single flower from each flowering node.

 Den Mentor is fragrant in my garden, although its fragrance is not as powerful as that of Den. anosmum.   The fragrance is subtly different from the sweet smell of Den. anosmum, but I lack the training to give an exact description of the fragrance.   I find its fragrance pleasing.

 As can be seen in the photo above the plant has a few keikis.  These will be removed and planted separately at the start of the next dry season, when the plant is dormant.  Some keikis will be removed along with the cane they are growing from to give them a sizeable reserve of water and nutrients to fall back on when they are producing their next year growth and roots.

Dendrobium anosmum var.huttonii, 2023 growing season, plant in wire basket

 

The best performing of all my Den anosmum huttonii plants is potted in a home-made wire basket.  The wire basket is five inches deep and four inches wide.  It looks small for an orchid that is several feet long, but it is the best option for me since this plant is growing outdoors and gets soaked almost every day during summer and fall which is the time of the rainy season.  The plant has been growing since February and still have four months to go to finish its growing season.   The plant has some keikis that I have kept on the plant so they will be larger and stronger when they are removed next year after the plant blooms.  During the peak of the rainy season, it rains so much that the media can become coated in patches with white fungus.  In a pot this would be really, really bad for the plant since the fungus accelerates the decay of the media and interferes with the capacity of the roots to absorb water.   But in the basket, the roots still have access to moisture and oxygen in spite of the fungus.  With the onset of the dry season the fungus dies out.   Normally this type of fungus is kept in check by the daily cycle of drying that the media experiences every day.  But during the rainiest days of the year, the media can remain wet for weeks or months even in the baskets. 

This orchid is growing so well I plan to move all my other var. huttonii to baskets.   Because some of my plants are grown in the north coast of Puerto Rico which is drier and windier than my current location, I plan to grow them in plastic pots with a small water reservoir.  I will try this because in the coast the winds dries the media in the baskets much faster than in the mountains.

Dendrobium Culture: Making a Den cretaceum specimen plant

 

Some years ago, I started cultivating a Dendrobium cretaceum plant with the aim of eventually getting a specimen plant with many flowers.  For aesthetic reasons I decided to cultivate the plant so that the canes hang from the bottom of the basket.   The orchid is planted in a way that is extremely different from what is the usual way of growing Dendrobium.   The plant was originally attached to the center of the bottom of the basket.  That way the roots would grow up into the potting mix and the canes would grow downward.   That is the exact opposite of how these plants are grown.    The basket is six inches wide and three and a half inch deep.  The potting media is bark, and fills the basket to a depth of two inches.   Den cretaceum is not a big plant so this arrangement allows plenty of space for it to grow for years.

There two-inch layer of media in the basket allows for plenty of air to reach the roots.   This is a very important detail.  You would think that is a very small quantity of media for a plant that one eventually wants to become large and bushy.  But due to the local climatic conditions it is the perfect amount.  The reason is that during summer and fall in my locality it rains almost daily.   At the peak of the rainy season the media can stay wet for weeks or months.   In a plastic pot this would mean a waterlogged media that would quickly become devoid of oxygen, will start rotting and turning into slush under the influence of fungi, bacteria, high temperatures and fertilizer.  

 To my delight, at the start of the 2023 growing season the plant, that usually produces four or five new canes every year, in a fit of exuberance, started producing nine new canes.   This is wonderful but it bring its own suit of problems.   First, all the canes are clustered and oriented toward the strongest source of light.   That means that the plant is self-shading.   This can result in that some of the canes will be spindlier and weaker.   To avoid that I moved the plant to a spot where it gets the strongest sunlight I can give it without burning the leaves.  Eventually as they grow the canes will spread out and the issue will resolve itself.  Because of the particular way the canes of Den cretaceum grow the leaves are not particularly vulnerable to burn if exposed to strong light.  The canes of this orchid arch downward, so that when the sun is at its strongest the leaves are edge on to the light.   A note of warning, while canes are capable of taking full sunlight, the base of the canes are prone to burning if exposed to very strong sunlight.  Fortunately, this is not a problem for me since the basket protects the tender bases from the sunlight.

If all goes well, by the start of the 2024 dry season, the canes will have reached their full size.  When the canes reach full size, I stop watering and fertilizing the plant, it gets only the scant amount of rain we get during the dry season.  The plant loses all its leaves and looks dead for a time.   In April I will start looking for the swelling flower buds along the length of the canes.  Then in May I expect the plant to produce a mass of flowers.  You can see on top the 2023 blooming.   The plant as it is now is in the photo below.