Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayfar
Is that the common practice or a personal preference? My Figaku has a few roots headed skyward, including one about 2/3" long, but they're in the center of the clump and I don't think my hands are steady enough easily remove them without doing damage to nearby leaves. Not that I'm sure I'd want to anyway.
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To be quite honest, I did this out of personal preference. However, I am not sure if that is common practice in Japan. As far as I'm concerned, the damage done to the plant is minimal as there are plenty of other roots bursting from it and it also still carries its original roots pre-growth season.
Given that the root growth placement is rather unpredictable, I find it odd that most plants being entered in shows show that receive high markings don't have roots going upwards into the air. I do believe these people trim roots (and leaves) to make their Neofinetias as pristine as possible. However, this is just my speculation. I'm hoping other people can chime in on this topic. Personally, however, I don't think it would harm your plant if you wanted to trim that aerial root, as long as it has plenty of other roots to get nutrients/water from.
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The unfortunate reality of Neofinetias in the US:
The sad thing about the Neofinetia culture in the United States is that the US database has extremely limited information. As far as I know, and please correct me of I'm wrong, there are only THREE widely known folks who are deemed "experts" by the US public. That would be Jason (from Orchidwebs), Satomi (from Seed-Engei) and Glenn (from New Word Orchids). I'm sure there are other expert growers out there who have had great success but the three I have named are the ones who I'm sure most of us have read about sometime or another quite frequently.
To top it off, most people only post photos of their plants and don't really give much detailed information on their specific growing conditions and their observations in whatever conditions their plants were in. Photographs of progression, changes in growth, what conditions they were in to obtain that growth for that specific type, etc, are all important data that we, as US keepers, should have and share.
Anyway, perhaps this is just the Science major in me talking and I've always been the type to want EVERY SINGLE DETAIL POSSIBLE. Others probably don't care as much, so forgive my ramblings. But for those who think alike, I say we get together and start gathering information from our OWN personal experiences. Things we tweak for ourselves and begin to try our own experiments with these plants.
Example Scenario:
Person A receives a Neofinetia 'kogane-nishiki'. This is a yellow tiger stripe variety. At the moment, it does NOT have very bright yellow leaves yet. Person A decides to put it on an EAST facing window that gets direct morning sun and only bright (shaded) light afterwards. No lighting supplementation.
Person B receives a Neofientia 'kogane-nishiki' as well. Not necessarily from the same plant (aka not a direct divison but rather a seed clone). Person B places his/her plant in a South facing window and receives no direct morning sun and instead, gets direct afternoon sun with a % shade cloth to prevent burns.
Person A and B can document and photograph the original state in which their Neos came in. After an X amount of months pass by, Person A and B can take a photograph again to see if yellow variegation intensified. Who has stronger yellow? Maybe it didn't change? Any sort of information would help. Of course, this isn't exactly the most scientific way of doing things because there could have been other factors that could've played into these situations. Perhaps person B's shade cloth got torn down by a cat and burned his plant for a day or two? Maybe Person A forgot to water his plant for a week? Nonetheless,as hobbyists, any sort of data like this is extremely beneficial, don't you think?
OR...
Another alternative is we should all just learn Japanese and hop onto Japanese Neofinetia Forums and we can learn from there and build off from that. No need to start from scratch.
AND.... that is all for now. I don't know how I got from root cutting to this.
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