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 anosmum var. huttoni

In the difficult weeks and months after the hurricane, I lost hundreds of plants to the changed conditions of illumination, humidity and rainfall.  This is one of the survivors of hurricane Maria.  Last year it was in poor shape and it didn't bloom.  The 2018 canes were small for the plant but they were large enough to produce four flowers.  I expect that as it recuperates from the damage it suffered after the hurricane it will go back to blooming well.  It is highly fragrant and even with only four flowers it perfumes the area around it.