Harrisella/Campylocentrum porrecta

[kindrag23]

Originally Posted by gdupont

Harrisella porrecta arrived today from Andy's! It seems huge to me! Great purchase, it came with many seed pods that had already been open. Obviously not useful, but still cool to see!

Congrats on the new babies. Could you upload a pic. For those of who are dumb about this kind of orchid.

[james mickelso]

GD, I am always amazed at how many different and obscure orchids Andy's is able to not only obtain but cultivate successfully. I cruise through his growing houses from time to time and am always a little in awe of how many small beautiful orchids he has. Everywhere you look there is something blooming. I am going to see of he has any nice larger rupics available. I am downsizing due to limits on GH space.

[mremensnyder]

My Harrisella porrecta actually arrived yesterday, but I did not find out until today. Here is a photo. I absolutely love it! It looks wild collected, which I think is incredibly cool. I have always been fascinated by wild collected plants (I always acquire them from a legitimate source though).

Also pictured is my ghost orchid, taken the day after it arrived during a good hard rain.

Lastly it a picture of another resident of my garden. These small snakes love to lurk in small trees at night.

[kindrag23]

Very cool. Did not see last part of post, so it shocked me. How cool. Ur orchids have a protector from the skys.

[gdupont]

mremensnyder, looks great! Mine is similar, perhaps they are wild collected. Im still so surprised by the size. Here's mine!




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[mremensnyder]

Wow gdupont, your plant is a good bit larger. I am not sure mine has previously bloomed. I am almost certain looking at both plants that these are from the wild. You can even see the lichen/moss growing on the twigs. It's a good thing we bought these right away, as I just checked and they are all gone! Who knows when they will be available again.

It's nice to know my orchids have a body guard while I'm not there. That little snake did not look too happy to have somebody near his tree.

Since I live in E. Central FL, I have looked for this species in a number of different areas over the years. I have never found one except possibly last year at Wekiva Springs State Park right next to the dirt trail paralleling the road about 8 feet high on the trunk of a large Magnolia. As I recall, it has the spider-like appearance of a ghost orchid (Dendrophylax lindenii) and was growing completely attached to the tree, rather than the usual twig epiphyte growth habit. It would have to be Harrisella porrecta though being in Central FL. I plan to take another look in the near future and will post pictures.

[mremensnyder]

So far, all of my relatively new leafless orchids are enjoying the, hot, humid, rainy summer conditions (misted with rain water every evening on rainless days), except one. Taeniophyllum pusillum is a particularly small leafless species and looked extremely healthy when it arrived in the mail. Slowly, over the last couple months, the flat roots have dried up, starting with the tips. It was down to two small healthy roots but when I checked yesterday, these roots had also dried up. The plant is dead.

This leads me to believe that this particular Taeniophyllum either requires cooler temperatures or really humid wet cloud forest conditions like Lepanthes and many other pleurothallids. Or maybe it requires both of these conditions. FL in the summer is no cool cloud forest and the humidity drops to 40-55% many days.

I ordered a Lepanthes obtusum on eBay from Thailand, but it took a month to get here and was of course doa. It's a shame, because I could tell it had been a healthy specimen with a TON of roots.

My Harrisella porrecta is pushing bloom spikes and I hope to get seeds at some point.

[mremensnyder]

Here's an update on this interesting FL native leafless species. Like its cousin, Dendropyhlax lindenii, I have not yet developed a knack for keeping this species alive and growing long term. It seems to, like D. lindenii, need stable, controlled conditions in cultivation to prosper and survive(at least in my conditions). My latest attempt with the new approach is working for my ghost!!! so far (4.5 days in). More updates coming on the other thread.

My Harrisella porrecta keep dying on me, and I suspect it is for similar or identical reasons to my ghost orchid failures (cooked from too much sun/heat, despite very high humidity, fluctuating humidity levels in some cases, rot diseases from staying too wet and/or in contact with wet media. Another problem with Harrisella is that it almost always arrives on cut twigs/very small branches since it grows this way in nature. The fact that it may be a fairly short lived species in nature notwithstanding, it seems that as these twigs dry up/shrivel/shrink, the plant has a tendency to decline as well. I can speculate as to the reasons for this, but do not want to be too verbose in this reply. Suffice it to say, when I order my next plant from Andy's, I will carefully and painstakingly remove it from the twig it is mounted on and attach it to a small, narrow slab of pignut hickory bark. This, along with emulating the growing conditions for my ghost will be my new approach with this species. The light levels and humidity will be basically the same, but I may give Harrisella at bit more air movement than Dendrophylax lindenii.

[samfish]

I have a plant from Andy's which I have had for about 3 months, and so far it is doing great. Like both of the plants above, it is mounted on a stick with no moss or moisture retention.

I grow it with my Tolumnias-- Watering every 2-3 days, and making sure it dries out relatively quickly- within 4-5 hours or so. I use K-Lite at 30-40ppm at every watering, as I do for all my orchids. About half of the original roots have green growing tips, and it also sprouted 2 new roots since I got it.

I have seen it many times in the wild, in Fakahatchee, Big Cypress, and Corkscrew Swamp. I have seen a few plants growing on pond apple trees, but most frequently I have found it on thin branches of Cypress Trees. It is easier to find in winter, when the plants have lost their leaves-- the silvery roots and/or dangling seed pods can be noticed. It is also supposedly abundant in old citrus groves in Florida.


Since you live in a location where it grows wild, it may be easiest to give it minimal care... Hang it somewhere that gets brighter light, like encyclia/cattleya. Only water it if it hasnt rained for 5 days or so, and use this as your opportunity to fertilize it. And, make sure it dries before night!


Good Luck!
-sam