[Ray]

There's a new story entry added:

Air Management

"Air management" is probably the single, most significant aspect of orchid culture, but a subject that is usually never directly addressed in discussions about how to grow them. Let's start with the basics: Orchids, for the most part, are epiphytes - "air plants" - growing attached to trees or rock outcroppings, or in the leaf litter on the forest floor, and have their extensive root systems rambling around the surface, where they are exposed to lots of air. They are not parasites, but have evolved to the point of not needing a soil medium from which to take nutrients, instead gleaning their existence by absorbing their water and nutritional needs primarily from nutrient-bearing rainwater cascading on them from the canopies of the forests and jungles in which they live. One of the more observable aspects of that evolution is the water-storage mechanisms of the plants, such as pseudobulbs or thick, fleshy leaves, and the development of the sponge-like layer of cells on the root surface, the gray or silvery velamen that turns mostly transparent when saturated, showing the green inner cells of the root. Another part of that evolutionary development, but one we tend to ignore, is that of gas exchange.