...but I really don’t know which way!
Dear friends, I wrote a story for you. If you think the text is too long, just look at the pictures. I hope you'll like them (well, at least the first batch of them, where my orchids... but you just wait and see, don't want to spoil it from the beginning!) and come with some suggestions on what to do!
BACKGROUND
Once upon a time there was a teen Romanian girl that didn’t like orchids. And before you throw with stones, please have the patience to read further…
Just like some of us that wouldn’t eat frogs’ legs just because it’s not traditional, she never really saw those flowers growing, and never (at that time) realized how diverse they can be. All she’d seen was one spike that her mom (a teacher) received from her class, upon graduation from high school. And when she saw that (cut) flower, all she could think of was: “this flower looks waxy and life-less! I don’t like orchids! And they all look the same!” And, to be fair, in those times, all you could see was the same kind of orchid, and even the same color! They were supposed to be fancy and expensive, a rare gift to give or to receive.
She basically doubled her age, and married, and left home for a good and thorough education abroad, in US. It just happened that, for the next 6 or so years of her life, she was bound to live in the “sticky moisture” that Miami greets its visitors with…
She tried, sometimes painfully, to bring some of the four seasons that she left behind. Just strolling in any superstore, or in the Home Depot plant section, or even on Lincoln Road on Sundays, she would meet many orchids, colorful and alive, trying to “jump in her eyes” and catch her attention… but she would quickly turn her head and think of “how she should just keep the tulip bulbs in the fridge one more month and maybe they will flower” or whatever…
Orchids then and now. The story of 13 orchids and counting..
THE BEGINNING
It was until last August (2007) that she successfully managed to ignore them. A darn long time, one might say! She went to Home Depot to buy a bigger pot for her hibiscus and some more potting soil, and she was lurking around in the plant section, waiting for her husband to come back from the tool section.
When, suddenly, a heavenly unidentified but somehow cinnamon-y scent caught her nose! She started to sniff around in all the planted pots, to identify the source! It was in the orchid section! “That is strange”, said the goofy girl to herself, “I didn’t know they can smell!” She took two of them, that were emitting fragrance, each beautiful and unique, like she’s never seen before. As she placed the pots in the cart, waiting for her husband and for the budget approval, a man came quickly and grabbed one of the pots from her cart, saying: “this is mine, I saw it first and I told them to keep it for me!”
She was a little shocked of his behavior… and did not know what to respond at that time. He run to the counter, paid and left quickly. Her husband found her dumbfounded, almost crying, holding tightly to a potted plant! He asked the goofy girl: “so, do we take that one, or what? You want it?” No use to say that, when told the encounter with the odd man, the husband wanted to kick his butt… after all, that’s what good husbands want when they see their wives in tears…
And that’s how she’s got her first orchid. Now, almost a year after this event, she pompously calls this orchid NOID Cattleya)It was like a new world just opened to her. It was the great expansion!
She still doesn’t understand that man’s conduct… maybe orchids make you do all kinds of crazy things...
…like buying the second one – Lc. Tainan City ‘General’– from an orchid nursery… and guess what? Not only didn’t she find it to be a “sticky” “crawling” “suffocating” place… but actually a piece of heaven on earth! She will always thank her friend Judy for recommending this place. This one is also fragrant, even spicier than the first!
The third one she received on her birthday, form a couple of her best friends. A white Dendrobium
Three more babies came on her anniversary! Oncidium twinkle ‘Kaori Izumi’ - tiny little plant but blooming its heart off!
Phallenopsis (a Harlequin type) – she fondly calls it “The Dalmatian”
And a vanilla plant
This February, her father came to visit for a short while. Her husband took her and the father to Home Depot, to look at some tools… and she came home with two more! Another Dendrobium,
And a… OH MY TONGUE HURTS… Vuylstekeara Fall In Love ‘Lovely Lady’ (she thinks; it had a label inside, it was completely covered by the potting mix, that said that). Beautiful just by itself!
And she took the opportunity and went with him to the nursery… and came back with two more…
Brassavola nodosa
And Dendrobium chrysotoxum
One last trip to her favorite nursery brought the numbers up with two more (for those counting, we reached 11)… Ascocentrum garayi
And 12 - Cattleytonia ‘Why Not’
Number 13 came as a Miami-farewell present: Cattleya loddigesii, a gracious plant with a discrete sweet fragrance.
Of course, by now you all know that the girl I’m talking about is me.
And to remove myself from ignorance, I just want to make a confession: one of the law-enforced protected plants in Romania is an orchid. It’s a lady slipper. I learned about it in middle school (6th grade, I believe, and at that time by the common name only) but I’ve never made the connection in my teen years (as I told you, all “Orchids” were looking the same, and nobody called it an orchid before). That is not the only orchid growing in Romania, but surely is the most famous of them all. Another orchid, Nigritella rubra, made it in the protected list (there is a grand total of 23 protected plants), but many other are not there yet.
If you want to take a peek at other Romanian orchids, please visit this site: http://www.orchidclub.ro/en/en_index.htm and if you click on "Orchids" and then choose "Orchids in time" please take a look at the last 3 photos. they are 3 of the Romanian native orchids.
THE CHALLENGES
Well, I had to learn what to do and how to treat them.
I’ve had some watering issues with the Phalenopsis . I think (at least for me) that the moss in a plastic pot is not good. Especially if you add keeping them inside during a Miami “winter” (less of the AC going, so less air circulation). When I finally gathered all my guts to check the roots, most of them were mushy, just 3 in good standing. I started my first surgical procedures, to remove the bad roots. Then transplanted it in a clay pot filled with predominantly bark mix. Its leaves never got back to the crisp green feeling of a healthy plant, however, for a while, it seemed to hang on, gave a fresh leaf and a spike.
Same issue I had with the white dendrobium. Again, my clumsy hands had to do a transplant!
well, not everything was so catastrophic!
Check this out! The beautiful honey-scented D. chrysotoxum actually liked it with me and decided...
...to be nice to me!
The Vanilla liked it maybe too much, and she kind of wanted to remain there, stuck to the wall!
(later, before the move, I left behind, stuck to the wall, the little new branch, which now is as big as its Momma and going up a Mango tree)
At the end of May, we headed to El Paso. Moving, plants and all. The truck was half filled with our belongings, and half with my plants. My husband took the challenge at a very personal level: his mission was to land them safely at our next home.
The Orchids, however, were placed in a large box, in the backseat of our car (towed because yours truly hates driving…). The driver window slightly open, for air circulation.
All was fine the first day, we traveled north and on a cloudy sky.
But on the second, we switched westward, and that sun decided to shine brightly, like trying to catch up for the previous day! I didn’t realize the danger and the consequences until the next day… when the exposed leaves of some of the orchids (the Cattleyas) had sunburns!
Desperation makes you wiser, and you don’t care if the car looks bad anymore, or what some people would think of you... I hanged T-shirts in the windows that would face south, and all the 3-rd (also sunny) day went on almost uneventful. When we entered the Big Bend region, however, we started to feel the wind and dryness in the air, so we stopped for some spritzes of water for the “babies”.
EL PASO
Arrival at 2am does not mean anything. Well, not when the mattress is in the back of the truck! So we were very eager to download the plants that night.
For all the other plants, it may become another story. But for the orchids, even from the first day we realized it was too dry. However, my previous experience kept me determined to have them ourdoors.
So my lovely DH created this arrangement, especially for the orchids. The double-bottomed pots, that would have some water in the bottom, but not touching the orchids’ roots.
Then, I had the mission of misting them every day!
Well, the misting turned into several times a day every day. I destroyed two spray bottles before I realized I can mist them directly with the hose, thanks to that hose-guns with dials…
But I had no clue on how often to water them…
The Phalenopsis decided (after a long fight) that this is no place for her. And then they were 12… I cried all day!
Only the little oncidium treated me with a spike, a little one, with very few flowers, but a spike none-the-less.
I had to go twice to Miami for my thesis, and during my last trip, my good friends gave me a new orchid, a little Tolumnia. White flowers, splashed with dark red, like I’ve just cut my finger and the blood dripped on those beautiful flowers.
Unfortunately, no pics of the flowers, they did not enjoy the flight back home…
On the good side, we’re back to 13! A tiny 13th!
Edited to say that this one is quite recent, and I didn't have time to mess her up!!!
This message was edited Oct 18, 2008 10:47 PM
The current situation stays like this:
the noid Cat has new growth, good pseudobulb hydration, but no flower.
"the General" was seriously hit by sun during the move.
It produced two sheaths but they didn't open in almost 2 months.
There is new growth that looks good!
The white dendrobium doesn't look great, all the older canes had suffered, but new growth and keikis are looking good. My problem is that my potting wasn't the greatest work of art, and at every watering (actually soaking, I do that for 10 minutes) the potting mix, mostly bark, moves!
Sorry about that, I forgot to reposition the photo
The little Ascocentrum doing OK, we have new leaf growth on two out of 3 plants in the pot!
Brassavola seems a bit dehydrated on older leaves, but the new ones are plump. Never flowered with me...
The D. chrysotoxum was so-so, some pseudobulbs lost their plumpness. Until about 10 days ago, when leaves started to yellow and fall one after another, massively. Finally discovered fine webbing, so I sprayed for spider mites. Now it looks like this...
The Oncidium seems to want to get out of the pot( there's a little plastic pot inside of the clay pot in the picture), and there is a plantlet (keiki) growing on top of one of the pseudobulbs. I bought potting mix and clay pots, have to buy myself some guts to transplant...
If you can see, on the pseudobulb closest to yhe eyes, there is a tiny white dot, that's the root of the keiki coming out!
The cattleytonia keeps slipping out of the pot, and the roots don't look so great. Has new growth. I'm planning to transplant her as well.
The Vuyl..... one has some new growth, but the bigger one got mushy (too much water???) and the other is too small!
The Cat. loddigesii seems quite well, just a small leaf discoloration (I think burn?)
... but otherwise lots of new root growth!
And last but not least, the Vanilla is happy, grew some more. Since the works for the roof and patio ceiling started, I moved her inside, she will be going to a sunnier space inside (dappled shade was good for her so far, I'll try to create this in the house)
OOPS! Forgot the purple-pink dendrobium, it has some good growth on it. Sometimes I think it's too big for that pot, but it's planted between two wood slabs, and I'm afraid to do anything to it!!! I'll just stake it!
