The orchid weed that grew from seed. :-) That was a Peristeria alata whose
seed capsule exploded before I could harvest it and I had little baby Dove
orchids coming up in everything from 4" Paph pots to the gravel floor. I
think there may be a few of these left too. They are 5 and 6 inch pot
plants now. It is really interesting to see how an orchid seed can wash all
the way to the bottom of a 4" pot of tree bark and then germinate and find
it's way back to the surface. And it is really interesting to examine by
magnifying loop how the fungus mycelia and orchid protocorm intersect on the
surface of a rotting piece of bark chip. Once I realized what they were and
that I had to let them reach a reasonable size before trying to transplant
them I was able to collect about two or three dozen plants, but the grassy
weed babies were everywhere. The ones that survived best were the ones that
were allowed to grow undisturbed until they had at least one obvious little
pseudobulb.

Very cold outside today. I will be power washing stuff when it warms up a
bit. Everything is very dirty.

I do appreciate everybody's well wishes. I have been getting lots of emails
offers of help, etc. I don't really have time to answer most of them.

wrote in message
...
On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:17:40 GMT in UMgHj.150$s27.16@trnddc02 Al Pickrel
wrote:

The giant C amythstaglosa is at Pat's greenhouse. It was in full bloom.
It
is a mess, but still intact. The mother of all Phal equestris 'kiekie
monsters' did not survive. It was hanging just beside one of the benches
that burned. However, I believe a whole tray of small kiekies I removed
from it in the fall survived and is probably in Pat's greenhouse
someplace.

Is this the one that had a seed pod explode earlier than expected and
lead to Phal equestris as a greenhouse weed?
--
Chris Dukes
"Let all the babies be born. Then let us drown those we do not like."
-- G. K. Chesterton.