AboutOrchids

I’ve heard orchid growers say that if nothing’s dying, then you’re not learning anything. True to form, when I kill an orchid, I try to figure out what went wrong so that I don’t repeat the mistake. With my coroner’s hat on, I’ll show you these pictures from happier times, before this orchid kicked the bucket last month.

This little orchid has quite a long name, Chondrorhyncha lendyana. It’s native to mountainous cloud forests from Mexico to Costa Rica. A few years ago I bought it at the San Francisco Orchid Show, and it bloomed reliably. This past spring, however, all its new leaves turned black and died. Thinking that it needed to be repotted, I discovered that this kind of orchid really doesn’t like having its roots disturbed. I repotted it anyway, and then it slowly dropped all its remaining leaves.

Ultimately, the problem was that I bought an orchid that I couldn’t properly care for.  This Chondrorhyncha should have been grown on a mount, not in a pot. When grown on a mount, repotting is unnecessary. However, mounted orchids with bare roots need constant high humidity and lots of watering. Since I don’t have a greenhouse or an automated watering system, that’s tough for me to guarantee all the time. In a pot, it only lasted about 3 years, but at least I could enjoy its flowers for a little while. Lesson learned, for now…

Explore posts in the same categories: Cool Growers, Mini Orchids, Orchids in the Wild, Photos, Problems

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 3:08 pm and is filed under Cool Growers, Mini Orchids, Orchids in the Wild, Photos, Problems.

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