HELP - Keiki is on a dying stem!!

[ammor497]

Hi there, my name is Michelle and I just created my account here.

I have an orchid with a keiki that was doing very well at work, but I decided to bring it home on Friday and now Thursday, I just noticed that the stem started dying very rapidly and has started to die even below the keiki. What do I do?

It only has one root that is about 2-14/16" just shy of three inches. It has one long leaf about 6 inches, a smaller one about 4 inches and another baby leaf growing. What should I do? Should I take it back to work? Should I replant it? Help - please!!

[Silje]

Hmm.... Not sure. Might be a lost cause. I've managed to get keikis off a dying plant by cutting off the stem and put in a vase with water. The stem has rotted away, but slow enough to provide the keikis with enough nutrients and time to put out some roots. But when your stem is drying up... I'm not sure. Keep it on as long as possible and then try to pot it, I suppose? What else can you do? If the stem is dry and dead, you need to provide water and food through the roots, even if they are still small. I'd maybe try to just water and mist the keiki for a while though, I'm lethal when it comes to overwatering and killing seedling roots when I put them in sphagnum or something. I find it much easier to mist them daily or even several times per day depending on the color and dryness of the roots.

And, almost forgot. try to provide the keiki with as high humidity as possible, so that it doesn't wilt away because of that.

[Ray]

Pot it up. It'll probably be fine.

What have you got to lose at this point, anyway?

[WhiteRabbit]

I'm with Ray - pot it up.

[RosieC]

Agreed pot it up.

Usually the advice is to get 3" of root but you are so close to that, and if the spike is dying then that won't support it any more. So potting it up is the best thing to do.