Orchids, Fancy and Simple

In my last post, I alluded to the orchids which are man-made, created by crossing as many as four different genera of plants to make something completely new. It amazes me that we can figure out how to grow something that's never been seen under the sun, and that these man-made creations would be so beautiful and fun to keep. 

This is a little Doritaenopsis (Doritis x Phalaenopsis). Doritis donates its intense coloration and smaller flower size to the classic moth orchid.

This little thing is billed as a Phalaenopsis, but it looks kinda Doritic to me. It's called "Lava Glow" and I adore it.

Phalaenopsis gigantea is one of the parents of this blush-pink Phal. It is a simply huge plant, and getting bigger all the time.

This plant reminds me of a person who's just too big for his own frame. Not long after I got the plant, it had a huge growth spurt, and its new leaves got so long they busted right off! Needless to say, it looked horrible for about three years until it replaced the half-leaves with new ones. In the interim, I called its breeder and described the problem. She said it was definitely a happy plant, which is why it was throwing out such huge leaves.  She recommended that I support those enormous leaves with a great big cache pot. Once I did that, the leaves stopped breaking under their own weight. And now, four years later, it's finally in bloom. You have to be patient with orchids. But as my dad said, "I don't mind waiting. I'm waiting anyway."

The rewards are great for waiting. Each of these glorious blossoms is almost as big as my outstretched hand. Giantism can be nice.

The Why of Orchids

The east window, where orchids get just the right amount of sun, year-round.

I often hear from people who say that they can keep orchids alive, but the plants won't rebloom.
Maybe it's true--you haven't got the touch, or you haven't got the accommodations orchids most prefer. But maybe not. I think it's important to keep in mind that orchid time is a very slow time. You can expect one flush of bloom each year. And sometimes it takes two or three years for a plant to rest and recuperate, until it decides it's happy and it takes off.
Note the humidity trays, always kept filled. But the orchids never sit in water; they're elevated on tiles so their roots don't get soggy and rot. When the trays evaporate dry, I refill them with really hot water. That keeps the algae and insects in check.

About reblooming: Most orchids sold in grocery stores and warehouses have been fertilized like crazy and pushed to bloom hard at a very young age. Maybe after that flush of bloom finishes, they need to catch their breath for a year or two. An older plant simply has more reserves, more leaves or more pseudobulbs (the swellings at the base of leaves in cattleya and oncidium types) to make more food. And it's so worth it to wait out that youthful period and let your plants mature and really show what they can do. That's when it gets fun, and addictive.

You grow together, like compatible partners. You find out what each plant likes, developing an empathy over the years.

The most basic requirement of orchids is sufficient light. I suspect that 90% of the problems people report with orchids failing to rebloom revolve around insufficient light. Many folks keep them on mantels or end tables because they look so pretty there, and forget that this is a plant with a need for strong light--yes, even direct sunlight! You wouldn't expect a gardenia to bloom and thrive on a coffee table, so why should an orchid? East window, a few hours of sun each day--that's ideal for most orchids.

Speaking of empathy, I get a lot of orchids as waifs. People buy them in bloom and then enjoy them while they're blooming, but forget to water them or maybe put them on an end table or in a sunny hot west window or cook them over a radiator. By the time they get to me the leaves are limp and hanging over the pot and the roots are rotted and the plant is gasping its last. I knock the plant out of the pot and trim off all the dead roots and put it in fresh medium and mist it every day. And it's amazing how it will spring back and say thank you thank you thank you. It's gratifying.

This was a very fine Doritaenopsis that was badly handled at our local Kroger's. It had been left out in 20-degree weather on a rack and all but two of its leaves froze off. I brought this beautiful plant home only to see its leaves turn to yellow mush and fall off within two days. That was two years ago. I coddled it and loved it and now it's springing back so beautifully, making new leaves and even sending up a marvelous, branched flower spike this spring. See how those leaves stand straight out? They're full of turgor pressure--they don't droop flaccidly over the sides of the pot. That's the sign of a very happy orchid. It's going to be a magnificent plant in another two years. Orchids are very forgiving, very long-lived, and so much tougher than people realize. It literally takes years to kill one.



I started this little Iwangara "Appleblossom" from one little pseudobulb from a plant of mine that had become infested with mealybugs. Unable to rid it of mealybugs, I threw the mother plant out and put all my faith in this offshoot. And oh, how it has rewarded that faith.


Such an elegant, fragrant flower it has--almost like a corsage.
Laeliocattleya x Encyclia cordigera "Pixie" sat around thinking for three years after I bought it in bloom. No buds. Nothin' doin'. And then, this spring, this:


I think it wanted to be misted, that's what I think. In fact, all my plants wanted to be misted. So now I mist them a couple of times a day. We all enjoy it. It's such a simple thing to do, and once I saw the jaw-dropping results, I really began to enjoy spritzing them.


Phalaenopsis "Lava Glow" is such a great little plant. Red is a rare color. And the magenta lip kills me.

You can sometimes find Lava Glow in Loew's. Although Loew's is an awful place for a great orchid, or any orchid. I've never been able to figure out what our local Loew's gains by never watering its orchid stock. The honor of having them drop all their buds and die? The thrill of throwing them out?

I know where the taps are at our Loew's. I go get a new watering can off the shelf and fill it up and water their damn orchids, that's what I do. And I don't buy them there. I buy orchids at orchid shows. Half the price and twice the quality. And should I ever see a red-vested employee lurking around the orchids, I ask them why no one cares for their inventory. Invariably I get: It isn't my job. It's so-and-so's job, and she's out sick/elsewhere. Oh, well, of course. Why should anyone else care? How can anyone walk by a plant that's screaming for water, dying right before their eyes?

With orchids, I grow what I can. There are some orchids I know better than to try: Miltonia, Zygopetalum, Phragmipedium, Cymbidium; the really big cattleyas. I stick to what I can grow well, and what's small enough to fit into a bursting collection.

I branched out a bit for this Psychopsis mendenhall "Hildos." I bought it for $25. It had one 3" long leaf. The grower, Kim Stehli of Windswept in Time Orchids, who I trust implicitly, assured me it'd be worth it. "Just wait!" she said. "This is my favorite orchid."
So I waited. Here's the tag, with my notes:

Bought in April '07 with one leaf. It sent up a spike and by June '08 it was blooming. By October '09 it had made 13 blossoms and was adding a fifth leaf. That leaf threw out a second flower spike in April '10. And here's that new spike. It really wouldn't have had to do that. I was delighted with it as it was.

But wait! The old spike is still blooming away.

With this.
Hold your hand up, fingers spread. That's how big that flower is. It waves, chest high to me, on its wiry, yard-long stem. Kim told me that she's known a single Psychopsis spike to keep blooming for seven years. So we never cut off Psychopsis flower spikes until they wither away on their own. They always have a bud up their sleeve.

It is over the top, ridiculous, dearly loved. With two spikes throwing out flower after flower, it has the potential of being everblooming. Yes, just wait. It'll be worth it. Everything good is worth waiting for. Orchids illustrate that, magnificently.

The Bursting Bud-Emergence

First bloom of a young orchid, or any orchid, is not a speedy process. What fun would instant gratification be, anyway? Orchid fanciers learn to enjoy the journey. It helps to have a lot of orchids so that when one's journey slows down or stalls altogether (hear that, Donna?) you can switch your fickle affections to one that's doin' its thing for you.

Another ten days down the road. The scales on the bud hint at multiple flowers to come. Squeeee! Now I'm wondering if it's going to bloom precisely when it would were it living in Guatemala. How cool would that be? Clearly, I have weeks to wait before finding out--this photo was taken in the last week of January. Slowly I turn, step by step (you have to say that in a Daffy Duck voice).

February 3, 2010: I'm having such fun with this post, photographing the plant as it changes. I've no idea when to expect flowers. I've been watching this bud for so long I can hardly imagine the day when its flowers will open and start emanating that heavenly scent in my very own bedroom.

March 1, 2010: It's really cooking now. I fantasize that each little kink and scale on the spike will resolve into a bud and then a flower. I'm misting it several times a day and at night before I go to bed. It's kind of like boiling water when someone is in labor. It's something I can do that seems helpful.

The spike elongates and miraculously differentiates into separate buds. Here it is on April 20, 2010.


By April 28, it's starting to open.
agggghhh
boinnng
pop pop pop

The color deepens and even more flowers open
and along about 10 AM that heavenly muguet/carnation/paradise perfume, barely remembered from a roadside in highland Guatemala, begins to emanate

and it fills up the room until about 1 when the sun is no longer warming the flowers

but even after that you can catch a whiff until nightfall when it rests and girds itself for the next day of beauty and fragrance.

It surely favors its mother.

Not to be outdone, the little Encyclia cordigera alba plant I bought to tide me over decides to open on exactly the same day as its big purple cousin.
Just to show me, it pumps out a perfume that's even spicier than the purple one's.

I fall in love with it, too, and apologize to it for ever thinking it wouldn't be just as lovely and fragrant as its cousin from far away.

My orchids aren't really so much plants as members of the family, friends who bring me joy. My bedroom looks like a sale table at an orchid show. I bring practically everyone who enters the house in to see them; they're just too wonderful not to share.
We all have days when nothing seems to be as it should.

It's good to have a place to go where everyone is happy and thriving, where abundance and beauty are the order of the day. To to receive affirmation in the sight and scent of well-grown plants; know that this, at least, is something you've done right.

The Swelling Bud

This is a post months, nay, years! in the making. You'll see why as it unfolds.



Here it is, my personal Grail of orchids: Encyclia cordigera. It is not a rare orchid; it is not a particularly difficult one to grow. It is a species orchid, which means it hasn't been messed with or crossed with anything. Like the clumsy, bespectacled hotelier in This is Spinal Tap!, it's just as God made it, sir. And here it is, growing at a roadside rest stop in Guatemala, near Los AndesLos Andes Post.



(an exquisite place you should go to eat and rest and rejuvenate while watching orchids and hummingbirds and tanagers and resplendant quetzals). To experience a visit there, and see some of the fabulous birds you'll find on this plantation/cloud forest reserve, see Birdchick's excellent

Encyclia cordigera. It's poetry to me, that name. It has rhythm and style. And it is a name imbued with memories.

For me, it brings back Guatemala, March 2006, the last, best trip to Guatemala that I took with Bill. We hung out with our friends Marco and Hector and laughed our way through Tikal.



Near Los Andes, in the higher elevations, we stopped at a roadside restaurant. Wired to a tree trunk in the picnic area was an orchid the size of a bushel basket, all strappy green leaves and lavender blossoms. Drawing close, I put my nose to them, as I do to all flowers.



I remember closing my eyes and breathing deeply. I remember muguet, lily of the valley, but with a deeper, subtler, spicier undertone. I remember floating away on a belladonna cloud singing, "Euphoria." (Stampfel and Weber fans, unite!)In a freaky bit of Internet kismet, when I Googled an image of Stampfel and Weber, the third photo on the results page was of Bill and me playing a Stampfel and Weber tune called "O a Little Wishbone." Yahhhhh! The Google, she works in mysterious ways.



But back to my Grail.



I remember thinking, "I must have this orchid somehow." Then I remember saying it. I remember Bill saying some strongly admonitory things. I looked the plant over. Every pseudobulb, and there were dozens, had a bloom stalk with multiple flowers crowning it. It was at the peak of perfection. There was just one pseudobulb that didn't have a flower stalk coming out of it. All it had was a single leaf, and no rootlets.



Of course, having this specimen was impossible. The thing was huge. And I couldn't bring it through customs even if I'd wanted to. And ohhhh, I wanted to.





I leaned in close to the heavenly muguet perfume. Then I blacked out from ecstasy.



Well. I went home to Ohio and dreamt of Encyclia cordigera. Looked for it. Finally saw a cultivated one at a show, which was heavily awarded, albeit not quite as deeply colored as the Guatemalan specimen. Still, the same species, perfectly grown, showing what could be possible.





Bought one at the same show, even though it was E. cordigera var. alba, a white cultivar. I didn't really want a white one, but it was as close as I could get. I was hoping for the same fragrance, at least. And that plant has sat in my collection, barely growing, stolidly refusing to bloom, for three years now. Bad karma, maybe, to take something perfect and bleach it to white. It's sulking. Correction: I looked at it the other day, and there is a tiny flower spike starting. Here it is, with a ladybug on it, circa mid-January. The spike is all of an inch long at this point.



Perhaps it doesn't want to be shown up. But oh, it will...it will.



Four years have passed since I fell in love at a Guatemalan roadside restaurant. And in my east windowsill there is a plant with five pseudobulbs on it. It is big and shiny and bursting with health and vigor. Its leaves are three times longer than the cultivated E. cordigera var. alba right next to it. Clearly, it has a plan.

I have tended it lovingly for four years, repotting, watering, feeding, misting it, giving it the catbird seat for sun and humidity, closest to the bright east window. That's it, near left corner.



And in the crevice of the newest, fattest pseudobulb there is something that has been forming for four months. It started as the tiniest green tip, perhaps a new leaf. But then it started to swell, and by the turn of 2010 it was clear that this was no leaf. It was a flower bud.



I peek into the crevice of leaves at least three times a day--when I wake up, when I dress, when I go to bed. And note the subtle changes, as I would follow the changes in my body were I pregnant.

Which



I



am



not.



(Happy Mother's Day!)

But I AM pregnant with anticipation. And my camera is ready, over the span of months that this post encompasses, to capture the moments of its emergence. I'll serve that up in my next post.



I cannot resist adding this Mother's Day dispatch. I wish I had photos but alas! I was busy driving.

So this afternoon Phoebe and I are driving around town on Mother’s Day looking fruitlessly for a nice Peace rose for Bill's mom Elsa, and everything we see hits us as extremely funny. We see this woman brilliantly adorned in a tie-dye rainbow T-shirt and stretch pants, and I begin to sing, “I seen a RAINBOW, I seen a ANGEL a-walkin' down County Nine!” and Phoebe joins in and at the point at which Rainbow Woman runs lumpily across the street to beat the traffic we are doubled over in the car.

The next thing we see is a woman walking one of the most beautiful Boston terriers we’ve ever seen. So I screech to a halt and we yell out the window, “We have a Boston at home!” and badabing! we’re instant friends. “He’s gorgeous!” we yell and she yells “THANK YOU!” and we yell “How old is he?” and she yells “One!”

“What is he, about 23 pounds?” and she says “Yes, exactly! I’m trying to hold him there!” and I say “He’ll bulk up! Ours is 5 and 25 pounds now.”

So it goes on like that a little while and we thank her for stopping and letting us admire Riley. Just to test I yell “RILEY! How old are you?” out the car window and Riley’s head snaps around and he stares at us, which is supercute because he has a bad underbite so he looks like he’s spoiling for a fight. She tells us her vet calls him a Boston Terrorist. Phoebe does an imitation of Riley snapping to attention with his lower lip sticking out which is spot-on and we laugh about that for awhile. I yell RILEY and she snaps her head around to stare at me.

The next thing we see is a man walking an old dachshund, and he’s carrying the requisite white grocery bag full of old dachshund poop. So I pretend to roll down the window and yell, “HEY! We have a bag of dachshund poop, too!” at which Phoebe releases peals of laughter and adds, “We’re trying to keep it down, but it keeps bulking up!”

We roll on, still laughing our heads off, and the next thing we see is a man walking a huge Portuguese water dog lookin’ thing on a leash. And he’s not carrying a grocery bag; he’s rolling a giant TRASH CAN behind him. “Man! His dog must poop a whole lot!” I say, and Phoebe squawks with laughter and on we roll. It was the best Mother’s Day moment I can remember. It had nothing to do with cards or flowers or overcrowded restaurants. It was realizing I have a daughter I can hoot with.

Orchids Again, but Wrapped in Dog

You may remember my blog from last November, when I picked a sultry warm day and repotted every durn one of my orchids, spread 'em out on the front lawn and about kilt myself bending and stretching and fetching and washing and spraying.

Normally, you shouldn't have to repot an orchid more than once a year. But I had bugs. Lotsa bugs. Tiny white bugs aswarm in the medium and awful awful Boisduval scale and mealybugs around the base of the stem and regular goopy sticky scale all over the underside of the leaves. It was verging on horrible. By the time an orchid starts to look peaked from bug damage (mostly being sucked dry by scale), you had better jump to fix it. Mine were not yet looking peaked, but I wasn't going to wait for that. See, they talk to me and tell me when it's time to intervene.

Last November, I repotted most of my plants in mixed bark medium, and therein lay the problem. Bugs just love living in that stuff. I decided to knock every single plant out of its pot and take a hard look at the situation. Sure enough, the plants in bark all had bugs, and the plants in Aussie Gold, which has diatomaceous earth in it, were virtually bug-free. OK. I had ordered enough Gold to redo almost everybody, and I went for it. Thirty-two times. Sigh. There are thirty-two of them.

There followed three days of futzing around with orchids, capped by a washing and spraying extravaganza. I won't use anything stronger than pyrethrins, which is probably why I continue to have bugs. Fine. I'll continue to have bugs, and I won't croak young.

There was orchid medium dumped everywhere, hoses and bags and trays and pots...it was ridiculous. But the weather was glorious for it all--raining and warm--and nobody got sunburned, least of all me. I just sat out there in the rain soaked to the skin and dealt with it. Enjoyed myself, in a painful, back-breaking kind of way.

The sun finally broke through, but by then everyone was potted and taken back inside.

I think the hardest part of any job is cleaning up everything you've pulled out while doing it. Blaa. You want it to be over, and then there's cleanup.

Mether, I get very tired just watching you. You are never still, do you know that? You should nap more. Look at me. I nap all the time and I think everyone would agree I am more lovable than you.

Chet Baker, what kind of thing is that to say?

Forgive me, Mether. It's just that you have been diddling with your orchid plants for three days now and you have barely done anything with me. When will you be all done?

When the last plant is washed and sprayed and potted in sterile medium, Chet Baker, that's when I'll be done. But you know I love you more than all these orchids thrown together. Don't you?

Yes, Mether. And I also know that your readers find me much more lovable than orchids. I am the whole reason they put up with your plant stories. And I would add "hamster stories" to that.

Well, all right, Chet. You've got me there.