Myrmecophila grandiflora culture: The well behaved one, that stays, mostly in the basket

When I brought this plant, many years ago, I decided to put it in a basket. I have other Myrmecophilas growing on trees, I wanted to be able to bring the plant into the house when in bloom. I put the seedling in the middle of a custom-made basket, with big chunks of bark. The plant has been growing in the basket for many years. It has been producing closely set pseudobulbs in a pattern that has been slowly growing around what was the body of the basket. I have had to remove parts of the basket to allow its pseudobulbs to grow out. Even though I used the most durable kind of media I could find for this plant, it has been in the basket for so long that all the media decayed and was washed away. The plant is now growing on its old dried pseudobulbs and roots. You can see in the photo the old hollow pseudobulbs. The inflorescence of this plant is quite tall, so if I put the basket on the floor, the flowers can be enjoyed at eye level. This plant needs heavy fertilization and plenty of watering when producing new growths. Failure to give this plant the fertilizer and water it needs in this part of its growth cycle will result in stunted pseudobulbs that won’t bloom. This plant is hung close to the shade cloth so that it gets the brightest light. I only move this plant when the inflorescences are developing. I use long hanging hooks, so that the inflorescences don’t scrape against the shade cloth and become damaged. When the inflorescences are growing, I take care that they don’t get tangled with the other baskets that are also hanging from the top of the shade house. This is also a problem with other genera that produce long inflorescences such as Encyclia.

Oncidium altissimum [Jacq.] Swartz 1800, with an unusual root basket.

This orchid is found in the wild in Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands and in several islands of the lesser Antilles.  In Puerto Rico it is widespread except for the dry regions (Ackerman 2014).  I live in a forest near the town of Arecibo,  Puerto Rico.  When I hike through the forest I often see this species growing high up in the trunks of trees.  However from time to time I find seedlings growing in less sturdy locations.

In the case of this plant, it was growing in a relatively slender branch.  As the orchid grew in size it started building its root basket.  Root baskets in orchids trap leaves and organic matter.  Each new growth adds its roots to the basket.  The moisture and nutrients caught in the root basket helps the plant survive and produce new growths.

The part of the branch where the orchid was growing died and started decomposing, but because it was covered with orchid roots it didn't fall from the tree right away.  Since the decaying part of the branch no longer had the structural integrity to support the weight of the orchid, the plant found itself hanging upside down, still attached to the tree by its network of roots.  The new growth grew in the opposite direction of the older pseudobulbs, which now were hanging upside down.  The new pseudobulb produced roots that grew in exactly the opposite direction of the old ones.  The result is the unusual root basket you see in the photo.

Eventually, the roots of the orchid that were attached to the still living parts of the branch decayed and the orchid fell to the ground after a particularly windy storm.  I found the plant by the roadside.  I took the plant to my garden to observe how it will grow now that the only support it has is its own roots.

Ackerman, James. D. 2014. Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles

Dendrobium hercoglossum Rchb. f. 1886, in a hand made wire basket

I got this plant as a small keiki.  The parent plant was a big specimen plant.   I made this wire basket five inches wide to accommodate the future growth of this orchid, which I expect will turn into a clump of stems.  The basket is only filled about halfway with media due to the exceedingly wet rainy season which means the plant can get all the water it needs from a comparatively small amount of media.  During the local dry season I only water this plant about once a month.

Dendrobium harveyanum in a handmade wire basket

When I got my plant of Dendrobium harveyanum it was a tiny seedling with canes barely two inches tall.  My main concern was that it would lose its roots to rot during the height of the rainy season, when it can rain every day for weeks or months.  On the other hand, during the dry season, not a drop falls from the sky for weeks and humidity can be low.  I decided to make a wire basket that would address the needs of the plant during both extremes of weather.   I made a wire basket four inches deep and four inches wide, for a miniature orchid, such as this Dendrobium, this is plenty of space to grow for years.  I filled the bottom two inches of the basket with bark,  then I put the plant on top of it.  The wire basket ensures that even at the wettest of the wet season the water drains away and the roots have access to oxygen.  In the driest part of the dry season I dunk the plant in water and the bark holds up just enough water to keep the orchid from shriveling too much.  This plant has been in this basket for eight years now and it seems it is good for at least two or three more.  When the canes reach the wall of the basket I will cut a hole in the basket to let the plant grow in the outside of the basket.  This plant has two inflorescences, one that is open and another on the way.  The tallest cane is seven inches tall, a pretty good size for this species.

Dendrobium wardianum, culture notes

I had always been curious about Dendrobium wardianum but I had never had the opportunity to grow this plant because I could not find sources for it.  But in 2012 I found a source that would ship plants to Puerto Rico.  I ordered two plants.  When they arrived I found that they were tight;y wrapped in sphagnum moss against a flat piece of wood.  I never bury the stems of my plants in sphagnum moss, so I decided to remove one plant from the mount.  The other one I left untouched, just in case.

The plant I removed from the mount turned out to be three seedlings planted so close to each other as to appear to be parts of a single plant.  I carefully extricated their roots from the sphagnum.  It was clear they had not spent any appreciable time in the sphagnum as the roots came out easily.

The strongest seedling was given its own basket.  It had a nice fat, two inch cane.  I was very careful to keep the stem away from the media and to leave all the roots exposed.  I prefer to leave the roots of the Dendrobium seedlings and keikis exposed.  But the stem was close enough to the basket that the new roots would have to travel only a short distance to reach the media

The smaller, weaker seedlings were put in a basket together.  Note that the basket has a layer of medium sized bark, sphagnum moss and then another layer of medium bark.

A year after they were planted the seedling have grown in various ways.  The strongest seedling started growing in the spring and eventually produced a seven inch cane.  But it didn't pause for the year, instead it initiated another cane, this cane topped out at eighteen inches, a near adult cane.  The two smaller seedlings have grown much slower, one is still quite small.   I never watered these plants, they got all their water from rainfall.  They were fertilized but only when they were growing, the fertilizer was one high in nitrogen.  The other plant, the one I left in the sphagnum moss, rotted away completely, during the start of the rainy season. At first the leaves turned black and then pseudobulbs  also turned black and collapsed.

Here is the largest plant with its nearly mature eighteen inch cane.  It is still too early to determine if this plant will bloom under my climate conditions but is is clear it can grow well in my garden,  I will not subject this plant to a rest period until it has at least two full sized mature canes.  The two smaller plants will be moved to a sunnier location since they now have an established root system.  Hopefully this will help them grow larger and stronger.  If the larger plant produces another large cane in 2014, it will be given a rest period of decreased watering and more sun exposure.  Whether this will be enough to make it bloom, remains to be seen.

These are the approximate values for rainfall in my location in Rio Abajo

                             J       F      M       A       M       J       J       A       S      O      N      D

Rainfall (mm)       99   76     84     165     283    155   141   216    237   233  176  135

(inches)                3.9   3.0    3.3    6.5    11.1    6.1    5.5   8.5      9.3    9.1   6.9   5.3

Bulbophyllum longissimum, growing on and around a basket

I when I got this Bulbophyllum longissimum I wondered what would be a good way to pot it.  I decided that the best way to pot it would be in a wire basket.  The idea was that the plant would be able to grow on top of the basket for a few years and if any pseudobulb grew out of it, the stem could be bent so that it could continue growing down the open sides of the basket.  The plant has thrived on the basket.  Although most of the pseudobulbs are growing on the top of the basket, several are growing on the sides with no loss of vigor or of its capacity to produce flowers.  The basket is two and a half inches deep.  I have found that any additional basket depht confers no advantages to growing this plant.