I will try to mount this thing tomorrow. I'm a little worried about it though; the roots look pretty beat-up and I removed a lot of dead material. I hope there's enough life in these five leaves to push out a healthy new root and get going from there.
I need to pick up sphagnum for this project, and will try to do that tomorrow. Today was spent repotting my B. Little Stars (actually a NoID, but I'm pretty sure). I posted about this in another thread
brown-aerial-root-tips-brassavola. I decided I didn't like how it was growing over the edge of the pot and trying to escape, though it looked very healthy. I unpotted it and began removing dead roots and old media to discover a thick, twisted mat of dead roots and rotting media right in the center. The healthy new growth was growing all in and around the rotting stuff, and it was an epic struggle to clean it up. I ended up breaking this modest-sized plant into seven sections (I couldn't help it) and I lost five leaves (including the biggest leaf) in the process. The largest hunk (about half the plant) was repotted in the old pot (after cleaning and sterilization) with new fine bark mix. The other six fragments were potted in fine bark mix in 2.5 in. pots (the sorriest fragment was nothing more than a small knot of new roots - the other fragments contained new roots with 2 to 5 leaves each). I hope some of these unintentional divisions establish themselves and grow. I was sad to lose half my plant (and it's biggest leaf)
I was surprised, however, that the big leaf I lost actually had some reddish blush on it. Maybe this plant has been happier with the light available to it than I thought (it gets an hour or so of direct sun each day when it's not raining).
~ Jon
Hybrid Mode
