Repotting Phrag. besseae

[MJSK]

I have had this Phrag. besseae since November 2012. It bloomed at that time and is in the process of blooming again, it has it's fifth bud forming now. I am attaching two photos as the newer growth has a brown stem below the fans that are forming and when I repot I was wondering if I should pot the orchid so the new fans are just above the mix, which would entail covering the brown stem completely. It has been this way for a year and a half, any suggestions?

[MJSK]

Whoops, the photos are inverted. I don't know how that happened.

[jeremyinsf]

The "brown stem" is the rhizome and you can pot that directly into the media, so when the new growths put out roots, they grow into the mix.

It's growing 'up' because in nature, they climb.

[RosieC]

Yes, besseae climbs, this is why each growth is above the last.

Yours is not as bad as my besseae hybrid. See these photos for the way I've been advised to cope with the climbing nature of mine. You can see in the second picture how the new growth is already climbing again.



The grower I bought this from also advised that they do pot so that the newer fans are at the surface, even if that buries an older fan. Sure enough my plant has a part buried fan.

They said they use the upper pot like in my photos to root the higher fan, then next time they repot they used to remove the lower fans and repot the upper one in the medium (the upper one should already have it's own roots at this point). However they discovered that if they left the lower fan on the plant it was possible new growths would come up out of the medium from it.

In fact on mine there is a part buried fan, a fan at medium level, a fan in he upper pot just starting roots. There is then a new growth from both the fan at the level of the medium in the lower pot, and another large new growth coming from the base of the fan in the upper pot.

[MJSK]

Thanks jeremyinsf and Rosie C for the info. I have a few other paphs and phrags and their growth habit is sideways, not climbing so I was puzzled by the besseae. Now the solution seems so simple.