Neofinetia falcata with rotted roots
 

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.

I've bought several small Neos from Hausermann. They usually arrive in medium to large bark in a plastic pot taller than standard for most orchids - what is called a "rose pot." Sometimes they arrive even smaller, in a tiny net pot with medium bark - which looks large in the net pot.

I never unpot them because they are so small. I do take care to let them get completely dry between watering, even when in flower. I haven't had trouble with root rot; they take off growing. Once they are growing well I put them under my daily water spray system and they continue doing well. But recall there are very large air spaces between the roots.

Remember these are quite succulent, even as small plants. They are more drought tolerant than almost any other orchid. It is always better to wait longer to water than to water too often. You are very unlikely to lose a Neo if the pot/medium combination dries rapidly after watering. Edit: And you never let them be cool and wet.

I'm not sure sphagnum is a great choice for your high humidity. If the plant doesn't have a lot of roots it will take a very long time for the sphagnum to dry out. The basket I see has a very large mass of sphagnum for the size of the plant.

So here's the roots after I pulled away some sphag. They look pretty good to me, surprisingly the worst part of the roots is the ends where they're in the thinner, drier edges of the sphag and have more air!

I wish I could re-pack the sphag like it was before but oh well. Maybe the roots will adjust to this heat. Should I mount the one that's blooming just like I mounted the pink one (the sphagnum a little bit tightly-packed but not very deep) or leave it loose, thin, and fluffy?

Hmm just read your reply... that makes sense

I'm biased. I view growing them in a sphagnum mound as a decorative stunt that works well in their native climate, but not so well elsewhere without daily attention and fussing. I would yank that out of the sphagnum and put it into large bark in a small pot.

They also do well bare-root so long as it's warm, humidity is high and they get wet once a day, but very few people grow them that way.

I guess it's hard to tell from the photos. It will make more sense once I mount the flowering neo and show what I'm doing with the basket. If the roots get longer than a few inches they will be basically open-air and I will have to decide what to do if they get too dry.

I use loose sphag, in open baskets so they dry fast. I don't "discipline" the roots as one would with the moss-mound display, they run rather wild. But my climate is really different. While I can't bring myself to call them "Vanda" (Neos are so different than what we think about when we think of Vandas) they ARE little Vandas. Which means that roots need to dry out between waterings, and get lots of air. How you achieve that will differ depending on growing conditions, but that is important. (I have a couple of them mounted but they don't do terribly
well for me that way, they get TOO dry, I have fairly low humidity)

So I've mounted it the way I did the other, and I've put pics of the steps I took. First is a thin layer of sphag, then the plant, then more sphag on top for the finished display. I figure they and the encyclia both like it dry and sunny, so in the morning and evening I can put them out in a sunny spot and I can water the whole basket similarly. Hmm the pics are in the wrong orientation and previously i haven't been able to fix that. Oh well.

Looks good!
As far as the photo orientation goes, it's a "feature" of the ancient software behind the Board. The fix... download to your hard drive. Edit the photo in some way (rotating and rotating back, cropping, whatever) and saving. Or, I have had success simply doing a "save as" on the file, with no changes, and no change of name. That seems to be all that it needs to reset the "orientation" metadata. But we are all used to looking at sideways and upside-down photos. So no worries...

I edited and rotated on my phone and got the same result - but if I do it on my computer it will work? I'll try that next time - oh, and this style board works much better than disqus or any other comment forum system I've seen. I've been on other boards using this back in the day and it's just about the best out there IMO.

---------- Post added at 06:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:21 PM ----------

So I have my saying - if it's potted the roots are rotted. But I see the advantages of potting - the roots can have as much surface in the tiny space as it would take many many revolutions around a branch to achieve, which takes up quite a lot of space and needs constant (daily for me but some plants have suffered dehydration which I am starting to remedy) water attention so a pot has a big advantage - still I've seen only rotted roots in the core of a pot - maybe it's just bad luck on my part. And my recent orders notwithstanding, they've been fine and this would have if I had unpotted it immediately. I re-iterate that because unpotting immediately has been so important to me in my orchid journey so far.

I'd like to learn to be able to use pots though, given the advantages. Are there any orchids which are more resistant to root rot which would be good to not-literally get my feet wet using potting media? I have several empty bots and baskets available which I just look at as things I wish I could use.