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.  

 

Neobenthamia gracilis "Arps Snowball"

This unusual looking orchid comes from Africa.  Specifically from the Nguru and Uluguru mountain ranges in Tanzania¹.   I got my plant from the United States, not from a business but from a friend.   I planted this orchid in medium sized bark.  At first sight a group of canes of this orchid looks like a patch grassy growths, not the type of plant form most of us associate with orchids.  The plant started growing well but not particularly fast.  To my puzzlement the plant didn’t develop long canes right away, it spent a few years producing a number of relatively short canes before it produced some that were adult sized.   In this case adult sized means between three and six feet long (90 to 180 cm). 

Because I was unsatisfied by the plant relatively slow growth, I added a top dressing of manure to the pot.  The result was not what I expected.  Rather than producing longer canes, the plant produced several short ones and became an untidy mat of growths.  Happily it did eventually got around to producing large growths, one of them bloomed in August 2013.

My plant is growing in a six inch pot and frankly looks ridiculously underpotted.  The canes are floppy and are growing drapped over some other orchids and the houseplants that are around it.  Some canes hang more than a foot under the shelf that is holding the pot. 

This particular plant comes from a keiki of an awarded clone, Arps Snowball CHM.  This plant can be seen in Ed Merkle’s web site.  Ed’s orchid photography is truly outstanding, I recommend looking through his galleries.   Occasionally you can see plants of this species in local collections.

¹La Croix, I. F.  2008. The new encyclopedia of orchids: 1500 species in cultivation