Stimulate blossoms ...???

[voyager]

We've had the coldest(maybe I should call it the coolest) winter I've seen since moving here.
The coolest I saw was down to 56°F, about 5 to 10°F cooler than normal during a cool week or two so a bit ago.
I was hoping something like that might stimulate a couple of non bloomers to bloom, hasn't so far.

Got me to wondering, is anyone producing a kiki-grow analog that will stimulate blossom development like kiki-grow stimulates kiki development?

[Andrew-L]

From what I've read there is nothing you can feed the plant to induce blooming. What kind of orchids are you growing?

Many orchids' flowering trigger is only hypothesized and not proven.

This is one of my goals as a orchid grower is to prove some of the unknown variables that occur during the life cycle of orchids

[estación seca]

It is a great question. I haven't read enough to know whether flowering hormones are understood. I'd think somebody might have studied it, but then it's easy enough to grow cut flowers in season.

[Andrew-L]

What exactly is in keikei grow?

Do orchids only produce keikei as a last ditch effort to make sure the species lives on? As in when the orchid is dying?

If so I wonder what is in keikei grow that signals to the plant that it's time has come?

[3rdMaestro]

Originally Posted by Andrew-L

Do orchids only produce keikei as a last ditch effort to make sure the species lives on? As in when the orchid is dying?

It depends on the orchid type. Some naturally produce keikis on a whim, even if the plant is quite healthy.

[Andrew-L]

I wonder if keikei formation evolved into the orchids deck of cards because it's seeds require such specific environment to germinate

[Fairorchids]

Originally Posted by Andrew-L

What exactly is in keikei grow?

Do orchids only produce keikei as a last ditch effort to make sure the species lives on? As in when the orchid is dying?

If so I wonder what is in keikei grow that signals to the plant that it's time has come?

Some Dendrobiums (nobile types & kingianum) produce oodles of keikis in lieu of buds, when the cultural conditions are not quite right. Specifically:

• Fertilizer applied past the cut-off date (mid Sept).
• Too much water (rain) past the end of the growing season (mid Oct).

I have tried liquid keiki 'paste' on flower stem nodes of various Vandaceous plants, but so far to no avail.

[Ray]

The keiki-inducing treatments are hormones that trigger meristematic tissue at inflorescence nodes to differentiate into shoots (plants) rather than flowers.

One type uses cytokinins to force the change, another was explained to me by the inventor as being “like agent orange”.

Agent orange was a blend to two, very powerful auxins, 2-,4-D and 2-,4-,5-T which are used to stimulate the plant into such rapid growth that it dies. How someth8ng like that was used to induce keiki growth, I don’t know.