'Christmas' driftwood mounts 3 and a ? about old cork mounts

[Posey]

I haven't been growing orchids much more than 3 years and have never before had any on old cork before these two. I finally decided the old cork must be the reason these two were not doing well with old growth and the new fans would die off when their roots turned back and touched the mount. Well heck, I dunno. They are in a root growth spurt now, with the move to the new greenhouse, so I remounted em today. They don't look so sick on the classy driftwood. LOL. Could you please tell me if old cork can accumulate things that are toxic or detrimental to new and existing growth??? TIA.

This mount is 26" long. There is a lot of coconut fiber, teased up, around these for now because of their sickly condition. The bottom one is Aerangis splendida and the top one is Aerangis kirkii.

[shakkai]

They look really good on that driftwood! Nice job!

As for the cork, I guess, since it is absorbent it can accumulate salts, etc. same as any other medium... I have nearly half my collection on mounts, the majority of which are cork, and I've not seen any problems like you describe.

Do you have a photo of the old mounts? If it were salts, then you would likely see the white residue from them. The only other thing I can think of is possibly some bacteria is living in the nooks and crannies of the cork?

[Posey]

Thanks for the compliment. No pictures of the old cork. Didn't see any white on them but they were both really really thin cork bark pieces that the plants came on. I tend to use the thick pieces when I mount stuff myself. In any event the old thin pieces felt almost spongie when I sheezed them between my fingers and I could easily break pieces off with my index finger and thumb. The velum on the roots that were still there seemed like it couldn't wait to 'jump' off or escape that yuckie stuff. Real easy to get both plants completely off. Who knows. Hopefully, all the new root growth, that wasn't touching the old mounts yet, will help the plants recover. I put some fluffy coconut husk fiber around them to kinda baby them along until they attach. Maybe they will feel so pretty on their new mount they will be encouraged and/or feel loved or something.