Den fleckeri winter care?

[SaraJean]

I’ve had this Dendrobium fleckeri growing under lights since I bought it in March and mounted it shortly after. It’s been doing well and continuously growing since then but I’m curious if anyone has experience with winter care for this species. I had planned on giving it a mild rest (cutting back on water and fert, but not a hard rest like some other dens), and sticking it outside for a good cool down. It just started 5 more growths, some are under a centimeter tall, so that’s making me rethink that plan. Not sure what sort of low temperatures this can take and also not sure if that will stall the growths. It would also be receiving less duration of light if moved outdoors. Any thoughts?

[estación seca]

I would keep watering any Den making growths.

I would find out where it comes from and what the climate is there so I know what it expects. IOSPE has some information on it. It appears to be a cloud forest species from Queensland, which has a wet summer monsoon and little to no winter rain. But cloud forests have plentiful dew most evenings.

With any luck one of our Australian members grows it and will tell us. It has beautiful flowers.

[SaraJean]

Originally Posted by estación seca

I would keep watering any Den making growths.

Yep, that was my main hesitation. I was planning on growing it a little dryer, but I don’t want those growths to abort. I also don’t want to rot the darn thing if it absolutely requires some sort of cooling period by watering it too much. Currently, I soak it every other day and was planning on just a regular spray of water once a week. I don’t think I’m going to reduce the water that much now. All those new growths kind of took me by surprise

The area where it lives indoors gets a little chilly at night in the winter, maybe low 60’s, sometimes cooler. Gotta love those poorly insulated antique homes... I’m just not sure if that’s enough of a cool down or not. I’ll try to look up some more habitat info on this thing.

[Roberta]

I took a look at the Baker sheet in Orchidwiz There's LOTS of info that you may find useful.
If you don't have OW (which includes more than 4700 of these) , then they can be purchased at Orchid Culture -- Charles and Margaret Baker . They offer subscription plans, the smallest is 10 sheets (10 species) for $10 . Pretty reasonable I think! You probably have 9 more species in which you're interested...

'Way more info than fits in this format (and besides, it's copyrighted so I'm not going to copy and paste) ...
Summary... the cool winter nights should be no problem, habitat lows 48-51 deg F. Drier in winter (late fall to early spring) but don't let it dry out completely between waterings - it gets morning dew even when it doesn't get rain. (Don't let it stay completely dry for very long) Being in growth, I think do keep watering at current levels.

[estación seca]

I'd like to point out something about the Baker sheets. They are absolutely fantastic, and an enormous amount of work went into them. However, they were done when there was extremely limited access to weather information for most orchid growing areas. The Bakers did not travel to every habitat they wrote about. Nobody could; life is not long enough.

Often the nearest weather station to a particular orchid habitat was far away, and at a different elevation. The Bakers clearly stated they estimated temperature information for many of the sheets, based on standard estimates of changes in temperature with elevation.

They report precipitation as rain. In much of the tropics, seasons without rain are still very wet due to nightly dew. In other areas, like Mexican through South American tropical thorn forests, dry seasons are truly bone dry. So some knowledge of the actual ecological niche the plant grows in is necessary. Cloud forests are rarely dry for more than a few days to weeks, at most.

Now we have the Internet, and there is an amazing amount of weather information from all over the world. It is possible to look up specimens at herbaria that post information online, like Tropicos. Often detailed GPS coordinates are given for specimens. One can look at a map online for the exact site where a plant grows, and find climate history for that area.

[SaraJean]

Originally Posted by Roberta

'Way more info than fits in this format (and besides, it's copyrighted so I'm not going to copy and paste) ...
Summary... the cool winter nights should be no problem, habitat lows 48-51 deg F. Drier in winter (late fall to early spring) but don't let it dry out completely between waterings - it gets morning dew even when it doesn't get rain. (Don't let it stay completely dry for very long) Being in growth, I think do keep watering at current levels.

Excellent. We all seem to agree on that last point! And I really need to get a computer that will run orchidwiz.Seems like that would help a lot for some of these and I will definitely get some culture sheets, I like having multiple resources to reference. I always forget about Bakers and $10 is nothing compared to how much time and money I’ve spent on plants.