Psychilis krugii, a form of the species with no purple color.

Psychilis krugii is an orchid that is endemic of Puerto RIco, it is mostly found in the southwestern part of the island.  In the 2012 PR orchid society show there was an area dedicated to native orchids. Among the various species on display there was this plant of Psychilis krugii with white green flowers.  The flower lacked the characteristic purple red colors that typical Psy, krugii has on the column and the lip.   Typically plants that lack anthocyanins, and therefore are green/white are classified as albas.  But taxonomic rules are explicit, you just describe a plant as "var. alba" if there is just a single plant of the type, as this classification implies that there are a number of plants that share the alba characteristic, not just a single clone.   When I saw this plant I thought it was a very rare mutation, since I had never seen one on the wild, but since then, thanks to facebook, I have seen photos elsewhere of plants that look identical to this one, including a plant "in situ".   I have a botanist friend that is already interested in this orchid so we hopefully we will see a description of it in the future.

The root of the problem, ever green dendrobium hybrid roots

One of the problems that you find when you are helping new orchid growers deal with problems regarding their plants is that for some themes there is hardly any information or photos posted. You can find thousands of stunning flower photos but few showing how a healthy root system should look like. To ameliorate this problem I am posting some pictures of how a healthy root system of an evergreen dendrobium of the group of hybrids of sphatulata x phalaenanthe sections. Along with some tips on keeping the roots alive and growing.As you look at the photo please note the following details.

1. There is very little by the way of organic material, the plant is potted in marble chips and the mix is quite clean, no moss, sphagnum or other moisture retentive material.

2. The mix is dry but you see massive root growth.

3. The roots are white and the growing tips are green and all growing at the same time, this is a sign of uniform cultural practices. You see very few dead roots.

4. The mix is firmly but not heavily packed, it has lots of empty spaces but the plant doesn't wiggle in the pot.

5. The bulk of the root mass is attached to the pot not to the mix.The paramount need of these types of dendrobiums is that the roots have access to ventilation and that they experience a cycle of drying. Nothing kills this plants better than tyranny of the evenlymoistness. When watering these plants they need to be thoroughly soaked, drenched even, but then they have to be allowed to dry. Heavy packed mix+heavy watering hand=root death. They need fertilizer but in mild concentrations and frequent applications, root killing high fertilizer concentrations on irregular intervals are sure death.

I know most manuals offer general information on how to care for orchids that is generally good as a starting point but with some of these orchids it pays to look at the nitty-gritty of their cultural needs. As soon as this plant blooms I will post the photos.

Psychilis krugii at Guanica State Forest

On February 27, 2006, I went to Guanica State Forest to try to find and photograph some variations of the orchid Psychilis krugi. The area is very dry and hot and during the "wet" season it is also horribly mosquito infested (now is the dry season). I had a hard time finding somebody to accompany me. I asked a female friend if she could go with me. I told her that there would be poisonous plants, the odd loathsome insect and fearsomely prickly cactus. She said that she would go since it would be a refreshing change from having to deal with her ex-husband.I went to an area that is rarely visited as the most well traveled areas have been nearly stripped of orchids.We had to hike for a while but when we arrived we found hundreds of plants but very, very few flowers. In fact we saw only three flowers. However the plants had many inflorescenses and probably in a month or two there will be a huge number of flowers.

Tetramicra elegans in the southwest of Puerto Rico

Tetramicra elegans habitat in Puerto Rico

Tetramicra sp, a plant in an orchid collection, the yellow mark in the lip characteristic of elegans is apparently absent.

Tetramicra elegans, wild plant


A flowering in the wild


Tetramicra plants, growing in the shade of some low shrubs

On December 10 2006, I spent most of the day walking around in the Sierra Bermeja hills. This is a line of hills that go from east to west along western part the south coast of Puerto Rico. I wanted to see how many orchids in bloom I could find. When I visited these hills some twenty years ago I found Vanilla, Encyclia, Epidendrum, Psychilis and Tetramica plants. Unfortunately I found very few orchids in bloom. I saw just one plant of Psychilis, probably P. krugii but since it had no flowers it was impossible to say for sure. Most of what I found was a large number of invasive pioneer species. A huge area was completely dominated by a grass, Panicum maximum that was about five feet tall and made walking difficult. Not even a single orchid was found in the area dominated by the Panicum grass.

 After almost three hours of walking up and down a rugged hilly terrain we arrived at an area that mostly devoid of grass, with justa few tough, low, scrawny looking shrubs and low palm trees. In this spot, under the shrubs, were the Tetramicra plants. There was no soil visible just a rocky pavement. The Tetramicra plants were growing under the shrubs in a tangle of growths with most of the plants a few inches over the gravel. The plants roots were thick and whitish. The roots held the plants in a stilt like way, two to three inches over the gravel, it appears the roots went some way under the gravel. Most plants seemed to have only two or three roots under each growth. Although there were dozens, if not hundreds, of growths under each shrub, very few were in bloom in the area I examined.  

The plants are dull colored and hard to see. Most of the plants are quite small, two or three inches tall and showed no sign of having bloomed. The plants I found in bloom were four to five inches tall. The inflorescences were about a foot tall and raised the blooms just barely over the surrounding vegetation. Two of the inflorescences had branches but only one of the branches was blooming. Although it seems there are probably many thousands of plants in the area I visited it is probable that they were more widespread in the past in the area invaded by the Panicum grass. I talked for a while with a local denizen and he remarked that the spread of the grass has been probably due to wetter weather that usual in the area. He also said that there had been some large fires in the grassy area. Another area person said that the grass had invaded some areas of the hills that used to be almost bare loose gravel. I suspect that human activity in the form of cutting down native vegetation, might have been an important factor in allowing the grass to dominate the area so completely.

 By the time my group reached the area where the Tetramicra grew it was late in the day and I had little time to make habitat observations. Here are some of these observations.Temperature: Temperatures can reach into the high nineties in summer during the day. Between December and February night temperatures can go down to the low sixties, most often, night temperatures are in the middle seventies range.  Substrate: Loose gravel composed of angular pebbles, the plants were growing over the gravel with the roots going into crevices and cracks in the rocks and gravel. Light: This spot gets very harsh full tropical sunlight, with little relief from clouds for prolonged spells as the area has a pronounced dry season. However the plants are growing under bushes where they get some protection from the sun.  Watering. Although this particular area has a seasonally wet and dry season, there is a nearby lagoon that supplies some humidity to in the form of fog year round.  Blooming: In volume four of Withner’s book series about Cattleya relatives, Tetramicra elegans is said to bloom between January and March. This might explain the scarcity of blooming specimens during my visit.