I wound up with a surprise Rossioglossum

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Among the orchids I recently picked up from some society members here who had a cooler failure is this Rossioglossum Jakob Jenny 'Sweet Stuff'. It has a lot of heat damage, but the roots still look pretty good, and the new growth has minimal damage. The tag shows it originally came from Okika Orchids. Their store requires signing in with a Google account, which I won't do, so I don't know whether they have it in stock.



Notice how different are these roots from most Oncidium intergeneric plants we grow. These look like Cymbidium roots. Of course, Oncidium is in the tribe Cymbidieae.

It is a primary hybrid between two very similar species: Ross. grande and Ross. insleayi. The parents grow in pine-oak or pine-fir forests in Mexico or Central America. I hope it has hybrid vigor, and grows well. The parents are spectacular plants.

I soaked the roots in collected rain with some KelpMax, fertilizer and Incocucor. Now that I know what it is, I put it bare-root in my front bathroom for until I can pot it. The air conditioning vents in my bathrooms can't be shut, and they don't have exterior walls, so they're the coolest rooms in my house. Tomorrow I will put it into a clay pot with LECA and set the pot in a container of water, so I grow it in semi-hydroponics with evaporative cooling of the pot.

[SouthPark]

I love the shape of those bulbs! Like those little perfume bottles. They really do look like cym roots!

[DirtyCoconuts]

Great plan. I do a similar (sort of) SH culture with a plastic basket of lava rock in a dish of water. The clay pot will not allow for a lot of air into the root mass so be cautious as there is a drain hole in normal SH containers.

You can also drill a hole into the side of the clay pot as a safety measure to ensure there is good air exchange

[Ray]

Originally Posted by DirtyCoconuts

You can also drill a hole into the side of the clay pot as a safety measure to ensure there is good air exchange

If you’re using LECA, added holes are unnecessary.

Volume for volume, a container full of LECA has more void space than with any other medium, so more air flow.

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I'll echo what Ray said. An orchid in LECA, in S/H or standard potting, can be watered daily during the growing season with no fear of suffocating roots.