Dendrobium chrysotoxum care information

[Shadeflower]

Welcome to my Dendrobium Chrysotoxum thread. I am writing this post to give a bit more information on an orchid I was tempted to get but found out it was nothing like I was expecting it to be so just in case someone is tempted if I ever manage to get it to flower and show some pictures I also want to give a bit of background info on the plant itself as it was not at all what I was expecting it to be.
Sometimes that happens that there are too little pictures or information online about a variety.
If you check out the care guide on travaldo Travaldo's blog: Dendrobium chrysotoxum care and culture

It says this is a "small sized, cool to warm growing epiphyte, which can reach the height of 10-30 cm" and "can tolerate temperatures down to 10C in winter"

Ok so there I was mainly having grown phalaenopsis and I was expanding my collection branching out to try different species when this one caught my attention.

I had my heart set on a Dendrobium harveyanum which stays much smaller but they are hard to find at times but there was a sale on the chrysotoxum so into the shopping basket it went.

Ok so I got the chrysotoxum thinking it would be easy and can handle cold winters.

Well, here come the problems. What I have discovered and the care guide does mention is that it might be able to handle cold nights but it does need very warm days too. This is actually not easy to achieve outside of a greenhouse.

For smaller plants it is ok but the bigger the plant gets the harder it becomes. Space is a luxury!

So if the chrysotoxum was a compact plant like travaldo reckons then it wouldn't be an issue but I will show how big the plant really is compared to a medium sized phalaenopsis next to it.

So if you don't provide warm days to compensate for cold nights then this will happen:





It also obviously won't want to flower acting like this. So the solution?
Provide day time heat.... Ok but I'm not hooking up a 100w or even 1000w space heater every day just to keep one dendrobium happy. I've seen people do worse.
But that's beside the point.

That is not an option. Another option people resort to is moving the plant day and night but that is too much work.

So the only realistic thing is to give it a little dedicated greenhouse that gets heated.

Tada:



What we do for our orchids.. But here you can see the size difference between the phal and the dendrobium. This dendrobium is not compact! It gets the same size as a dendrobium nobile but at least a dendrobium nobile does not need warm temps in winter.

This is a little custom made greenhouse using Ikea glass shelving and insulation boards. I have a light at the top and a little 40 watt space heater on the right.

So there you go, that's my contribution on dendrobium chrysotoxum and to do your homework well before picking a new orchid to come home. Some orchids like this one should only be bought if one has a greenhouse for it. I really want to see the flowers on this one since I've been growing it for a while already so I am trying to give it better conditions and see if it improves.