Tropical Zone Gardening: Anyone in here grow orchids?, 1 by JPlunket

JPlunket wrote:
Then there are oncidium (or is it dendrobium???) which have more succulent-type leaves, which form and grow in an ever-extending series, with flower stalks (I hope) occasionally emerging from various points.

These take the same minimal watering as phals. and dpon't seem to mind getting a couple hours of direct sun. I have several of these that have done very well, and the only effort I've exerted has been to transport them down here (in ziplocs, in a carry-on!) and plug them in to the right sort of rocky organic mix.

The star athlete in the pic below was native to the yard, rescued after construction damaged it. It's been dropping roots, not flower stalks, regularly and the earliest of these are already serving as flying buttresses, extra legs, just amazing, while others have wriggled into crevices of the mahogany tree's bark. Defintiely not going anywhere! It's grown almost three feet upward in 12 months.

THose flowering are all among those I've brought down from DC.

A couple points: first, it's nice finally to have found something that rewards a lazy nature, a random, episodic attention span, combined with a few bits of expert advice I've read here and in a couple dauntingly detailed orchid-growing books. Second, after winging it a few times and working with a couple different types of orchids, hands-on, you'll be amazed at how much MORE you then are able to glean from the scholarly works of true experts --it all makes much more sense once you've gotten to know a couple of the plants intimately.

They are really amazing organisms, and the work of orchid experts world-wide is astounding.

Read The Orchid Thief!!