Hi, I have a couple of really basic questions, I hope that's OK. I have a
phaleonopsis (I DO know that much) though I don't know what kind of hybrid
it is, I recall that when it was flowering it was a deep fuschia, really
pretty. I bought it about three years ago at a local hardware/gardening
store. Just the fact that it's still alive thrills me no end (I
unfortunately killed my first orchid some years ago...overwatering) but
yesterday I got an even bigger thrill...it's putting out a flower spike for
the first time since I've had it. So my question about that is: what do I
do? I'm afraid to breath on it in case I mess it up, lol. I am using Schultz
orchid food, I gave it a light dose last night but I don't feed it super
regularly. (I rahter err on teh side of too little rather than too much,
like water) The plant itself is big and healthy. I repotted it year before
last and that worked well too, so I was happy about that. Do I need to do
anything with this flower spike to set buds or something? I read some places
about messing around with nightime temps and such to make it bloom (or
spike?) but I haven't found the same information in one place, and of course
orchid books try to cover all kinds of orchids so they can be sketchy on
particular info (the ones I've looked at anyway).

And my second very basic question is, are those sort of fleshy green
tendrils coming out of the base of the plant its roots? Do I need to trim
them? They're climbing outside the pot...When I repotted I seem to recall
stringy root-like things underneath that looked more like what I think of as
roots...what are those?

Thanks very much, I don't know any other orchid people and this seems a safe
place to ask newbie questions...

Melinda

Melinda,

Congratulations on the flower spike!

Once you have the beginnings of a spike on a Phal, you should mainly
continue doing what you have been doing -- the temperature difference
between night and day that you refer to is useful to induce spiking, but
once the spike is started it is not necessary to continue the temperature
difference.

Continue watering the orchid when needed, continue fertilizing it when you
get a chance (but there is no need to fertilize more now that it is in spike
than when it was not), and be sure to continue giving it sufficient light.
Try to not reorient the orchid too much, since its spike will grow toward
the light, and reorienting it could cause a spike that looks strange with
flowers that are pointing in all kinds of directions. I once had one flower
spike that looked like it did a U-turn and continued in the opposite
direction because of a change of the direction where the light was coming
from -- it looked funny.

Try not to change the environment that the orchid is in too much at this
point, since it seems to like the current environment, and hence is spiking.
You may want to consider what is different about this time, why the orchid
is spiking now? has something changed in its environment that may have
contributed to spiking? Have you moved the location of this plant recently?
Has the light or the temperature changed? If you can figure this out, you
should be able to reproduce this result next year.

Do not put a fruit bowl close to the orchid when it is in bud, since that
may lead to bud blast (the ethylene gas given off by ripening fruit could
cause buds to fall off without flowering).

It is safe for you to breathe on it. :-) In fact you may even consider
staking the spike -- attaching it to a stake, for example a bamboo stake. It
is best to start staking the spike once it is several inches long -- do not
start when it is really small because then it is more fragile. Staking can
help support the flower spike, making it less likely to break, and improving
the aesthetic appeal of the flowering spike.

The fleshy green (or white) glossy tendrils are roots. If they are outside
of the potting medium then they are called aerial roots. Phalaenopsis grow
on trees in nature, and their roots are exposed to the air. These roots are
especially suited to getting moisture out of the humidity in the air. Do not
trim these roots, unless they are completely dry or unless they are
rotting -- as long as they are fleshy then they are a sign of a healthy
Phal. The stringy (or wiry?) things that you saw when you repotted were most
likely the cores of roots that had lost their fleshy cover -- these are
roots that are less healthy than the fleshy ones. You want your orchid to
have as many fleshy roots as possible, but wiry ones are ok as well as long
as these are not the only ones the Phal has. Rotting roots are bad and need
to be trimmed during repotting.

Feel free to ask additional questions. This newsgroup is indeed a
newbie-friendly place. :-)

Good luck with your flower spike!

Joanna

"J Fortuna" wrote in message
news:7JWaf.4017$dU6.899@trnddc03...
Melinda,

Congratulations on the flower spike!

snip


Feel free to ask additional questions. This newsgroup is indeed a
newbie-friendly place. :-)

Good luck with your flower spike!

Joanna



Thanks very much Joanna that's exactly what I needed to know...very
interesting about the fruit thing, I'd never heard that. I'll let you all
know how it goes.

Melinda

I may be wrong (I don't think so, but you never know), but if the root has
lost its fleshy part, and all you're left with is the "wiry core", they are
not "OK", but certainly are "less healthy", they're dead!

They might function to provide a mechanical anchor when repotting, but they
do nothing as far as absorbing water or nutrition for the plant.

--

Ray Barkalow - First Rays Orchids - www.firstrays.com
Plants, Supplies, Artwork, Books and Lots of Free Info!

Ray,
You are much more likely right than I am, since you know so much more about
orchids than I do. So the wiry roots are dead? Hmm, good to know. When I
learned how to repot Phals, I was told to leave the ones that only had wiry
cores left as well, but maybe as you say the idea was to provide additional
mechanical anchor.
Joanna

"Ray" wrote in message
. ..
I may be wrong (I don't think so, but you never know), but if the root has
lost its fleshy part, and all you're left with is the "wiry core", they
are
not "OK", but certainly are "less healthy", they're dead!

They might function to provide a mechanical anchor when repotting, but
they
do nothing as far as absorbing water or nutrition for the plant.

--

Ray Barkalow - First Rays Orchids - www.firstrays.com
Plants, Supplies, Artwork, Books and Lots of Free Info!

I recently repotted four phals and encountered roots in different
conditions:

1) Greenish white, aerial roots, sticking out of the pot. I was careful
to mentally earmark these so that, in the new pot, they are not put
into the bark put left aerial--outside the potting material.

2) Healthy light and dark green, thick roots that were in the potting
material. Actually, some of them aren't round but, adapting to gaps in
the potting material, have an oval or almost flat cross-section but at
some points are more roundish. Also, they show some branching. I potted
these back into the new bark in the pot.

3) Dark brown, rotten roots with dark material oozing and coming off:
gross! I cut these off with a sterilized scissors, and washed away the
residues.

4) Questionable dark greenish brown roots with some sections sloughing
off, leaving the wire core you describe. Comparing to the greener
healthy roots (2) and the darker rotten roots (4), I postulated that
these roots were in the process of decaying and decided to cut them
off. Note, however, that some of them were quite long and looked
healthy up to some point. In those cases, I only cut off the unhealthy
portions.

During potting, I found that two of the phals had mostly healthy roots,
one had one-half of its roots rotten, and the last had only two viable
roots! But after potting, they're each doing well. I expected the one
with 99% rotten roots to die (since it had so few roots left after
surgery), but instead it's been growing new leaves and roots and
apparently thriving in the new potting material. In both of the
high-rot cases, the orchids had been potted--by the vendor--in a thick
peat moss that retained too much moisture when placed indoors. I
replaced that with a bark-perlite mixture in transparent, ventilated
pots.

-Munir

"Munir" wrote in message
oups.com...
I recently repotted four phals and encountered roots in different
conditions:

1) Greenish white, aerial roots, sticking out of the pot. I was careful
to mentally earmark these so that, in the new pot, they are not put
into the bark put left aerial--outside the potting material.

I'm also just beginning, and took an excellent class given by one of the
experts from the local orchid society. This class included everyone getting
an overgrown phal, with roots going everywhere, and repotting it. The
instructor (a past president of this group, who brought in fabulous examples
of things she's growing) indicated that we should stuff all the "aerial
roots" into the potting medium in the new pot, so that none were sticking
out when we were done. I gathered from this that the roots are very
adaptive, whether they're inside the pot or outside, and can take up
moisture and nutrients easily even if shifted from "out" to "in." Is this
incorrect?
Thanks for any insights here.

I'm also just beginning, and took an excellent class given by one of
the experts from the local orchid society. This class included everyone
getting an overgrown phal, with roots going everywhere, and repotting it.
The instructor (a past president of this group, who brought in fabulous
examples of things she's growing) indicated that we should stuff all the
"aerial roots" into the potting medium in the new pot, so that none were
sticking out when we were done. I gathered from this that the roots are
very adaptive, whether they're inside the pot or outside, and can take up
moisture and nutrients easily even if shifted from "out" to "in." Is this
incorrect?
Thanks for any insights here.

It's not incorrect if the roots will go willingly in the pot. It is most
emphatically incorrect if you have aerial roots which wholeheartedly resist
to the point of breakage. I think the key to the answer is a definition of
aerial roots. If a Phal is in dire need of repotting, it may have grown up
out of the pot, with roots showing. In that case, the roots are not truly
aerial, but simply exposed, so sure, they will go into the medium. Most of
us think of aerial roots as those which grow in an unruly fashion and do not
lend themselves to "going in the pot". For example, I have several Phals
with great roots in the pot and also long roots growing almost straight up
alongside the leaves. Those roots will never go into the pot.

Remember that whether the roots are in or out of the medium, they are of
value to the plant. So, when you water/fertilize, be sure to include any
aerial roots that are not submerged in the medium.

Welcome to orchids anonymous.........

Diana

Munir wrote:
..............
..........................
1) Greenish white, aerial roots, sticking out of the pot. I was careful
to mentally earmark these so that, in the new pot, they are not put
into the bark put left aerial--outside the potting material.
.......................................
.............................

I'm sure you know that Phals, over time, loose their lower leaves as
they grow more leaves from the top. Well, the roots do about the same.
The oldest roots are from the lowest point of the "trunk" and the new
roots come from higher up.
So... what is your long range plan for this plant if you never put
aerial roots into the pot? Eventually the old roots die off as new ones
grow higher up. Eventually you will have a plant with nothing but aerial
roots sitting on top of the pot.

Steve

This is actually a statement and not a question. If I'm reading this
right, the statement says that when repotting it's important to trim
off dead roots from the bottom and put most of the roots in the medium.
I'd have to agree with that in general.

The main reason to keep some aerial roots outside the medium is if they
are large, healthy and don't want to go into the pot such than forcing
them might damage them or require truncating them substantially. In
such cases, it's probably wiser to leave them outside.

-M

Ray: I don't think loss of the velamen coating necessarily means the root
itself is dead. Mostly in the vandas (since those are the roots I see most
of), I have noticed that sometimes very dead-looking roots, even just the
bare "wires," will start to grow new velamen and growing tips.

Kenni

"Ray" wrote in message
. ..
I may be wrong (I don't think so, but you never know), but if the root has
lost its fleshy part, and all you're left with is the "wiry core", they
are
not "OK", but certainly are "less healthy", they're dead!

They might function to provide a mechanical anchor when repotting, but
they
do nothing as far as absorbing water or nutrition for the plant.

--

Ray Barkalow - First Rays Orchids - www.firstrays.com
Plants, Supplies, Artwork, Books and Lots of Free Info!

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:13:08 -0800, Kenni Judd wrote
(in article ):

Ray: I don't think loss of the velamen coating necessarily means the root
itself is dead. Mostly in the vandas (since those are the roots I see most
of), I have noticed that sometimes very dead-looking roots, even just the
bare "wires," will start to grow new velamen and growing tips.

Kenni

"Ray" wrote in message
. ..
I may be wrong (I don't think so, but you never know), but if the root has
lost its fleshy part, and all you're left with is the "wiry core", they
are
not "OK", but certainly are "less healthy", they're dead!

They might function to provide a mechanical anchor when repotting, but
they
do nothing as far as absorbing water or nutrition for the plant.

I've asked before, and will again. Does anyone know of a good treatise or
chapter on the appearance and behavior of orchid roots, especially with
regard to pruning at re-potting time? I've always just whacked off the soggy,
dark ones, and the extremely dry ones with fragmented velamen.

Tom
Walnut Creek, CA
Nikon D70

Interesting!

I've seen really thin roots do that, but not just from the cores.

--

Ray Barkalow - First Rays Orchids - www.firstrays.com
Plants, Supplies, Artwork, Books and Lots of Free Info!


"Kenni Judd" wrote in message
...
Ray: I don't think loss of the velamen coating necessarily means the root
itself is dead. Mostly in the vandas (since those are the roots I see
most of), I have noticed that sometimes very dead-looking roots, even just
the bare "wires," will start to grow new velamen and growing tips.

Kenni

"Ray" wrote in message
. ..
I may be wrong (I don't think so, but you never know), but if the root has
lost its fleshy part, and all you're left with is the "wiry core", they
are
not "OK", but certainly are "less healthy", they're dead!

They might function to provide a mechanical anchor when repotting, but
they
do nothing as far as absorbing water or nutrition for the plant.

--

Ray Barkalow - First Rays Orchids - www.firstrays.com
Plants, Supplies, Artwork, Books and Lots of Free Info!

Ray wrote:

Interesting!

I've seen really thin roots do that, but not just from the cores.


Have you ever seen a root with no velamen at the top where it starts but
if you follow it down there is velamen on the younger part with an
actively growing tip? I have. I always figure the root doesn't have a
long future and I cut it off unless unless the plant really needs the root.
I cut off any root that has no velamen at all, assuming it is dead. Only
exception would be for support on a plant that is nearly rootless other
wise.

Steve

I'm not talking just the velamen gone, I mean everything but that inner
core.

--

Ray Barkalow - First Rays Orchids - www.firstrays.com
Plants, Supplies, Artwork, Books and Lots of Free Info!


"Steve" wrote in message
...
Ray wrote:

Interesting!

I've seen really thin roots do that, but not just from the cores.


Have you ever seen a root with no velamen at the top where it starts but
if you follow it down there is velamen on the younger part with an
actively growing tip? I have. I always figure the root doesn't have a long
future and I cut it off unless unless the plant really needs the root.
I cut off any root that has no velamen at all, assuming it is dead. Only
exception would be for support on a plant that is nearly rootless other
wise.

Steve