Oh, woe is me! My saying two was true, if it's potted the roots are rotted! I doubt that was Hausermann's doing though, the pink-flowered form had only maybe 10% dead roots which from what I've ever seen is a good ratio.
I would have mounted it on arrival but it had three fresh blooms and a bud. I almost ripped the blooms off with the white paper Easter grass but my nephew was watching me unbox it and he saved the day, calling out "are those the flowers?" which startled me and I strained my eyes - "where?" - he pointed above the leaves "there!" and then I saw it - a flower spike with three fresh blooms and a bud. I felt instant conflict - unpot it now and lose the spike probably, or see how long I can keep it blooming so I can enjoy the fulness of its charm as an early reward. My nephew was proud to be a hero too!
That was around two weeks ago. Today I gave it a sniff because I still think it's cool how it smells like fresh cucumber during the day and a mix of gardenia, honeysuckle, maybe coconut, and forbidden things (or just my imagination?) at night. I smelled cucumber.. and mushrooms! Oh no! I had to unpot it and oh noes this will set it back
The other falcata in the same shipment was potted in bark only, no sphag so I thought being such a small pot (2") there's no way it would retain too much water but I was wrong! It doesn't drink anything! I'm (forcibly) going to mount it today and I'm thinking of taking out some sphag from the mount of the other one and loosening it up a bit, give it some air. A pic of that one is also attached and I see a dead root so I think I might need to re-mount it with less sphag. I'm new to using sphag, I've been trying to mount directly on branches with twine only and it seems to be halfway working but the plants overall could use more moisture.
If anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it, right now my plan is to mount it where I want it using lighter sphag than the other one, after loosening up the other one and assessing the condition of the roots. Being called wind plants, and the color of the root tips being a special feature of this orchid I guess they must really like being in open air with basically just humidity giving them what they need. Maybe not literally but they don't need or want liquid water held against their roots for 6 hours at a time like some orchids. They're just not very thirsty.
Another question: this plant has leaves going in all directions instead of in a single plane. It's x self which means it's a seedling and that's a desirable characteristic right? Or is it just a consequence of too little light and soggy roots in this case? It's not new growths as far as I can tell.
Neofinetia falcata with rotted roots
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