Mounting Oncidium sphacelatum, a climber, Part 1

[estación seca]

Here is how I made a mount for a 2-bulb segment of Oncidium sphacelatum. It came to me recently from First Ray's.

The specific means "appears dead." I don't have Lindley's original description, but it would be interesting to find out why he chose that name.

I had to break this into parts because only 10 photos may be uploaded per post. This is the first part.



This is the bare-root Oncidium sitting on a Gladstone hardy lily pad which is 10" / 25cm in the small dimension.



This is the mesquite branch I selected from my wood pile. The mattock is a small hand-held one, not one with a long handle. The branch has been outside in mostly shade for over 2 years. Some of the bark is peeling. The large yucca is a juvenile Yucca faxoniana, and the longer-leaved rosette behind it is the octopus agave, Agave vilmoriniana. It isn't visible here but that octopus has a faint variegation.

Mesquite wood is very hard and grows fast. It makes good wood for smoking food, and furniture with a beautiful curved grain. The genus is Prosopis and it's in the bean family.

Native Americans harvested the mature pods. They pounded them in large mortars to separate the pod material from the seeds, then winnowed out the seeds. The powdered pods were cooked and eaten as a porridge. The beans were cooked as any dried bean. Dried pods contain a lot of sugar. They ripen when not much other food is available in the Sonoran Desert. Dried mesquite pods formed the majority of the early summer diet of a lot of animals native here. The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix teaches children and adults this process so we can learn how the people who came before us lived.

You will, no doubt, be surprised to learn the small plant in the foreground, with yellow daisy flowers, has had its name changed a few times. When I bought my house in 1986 it was known as the Dahlberg daisy. Then it was Dyssodia, which is what most people call it. The oh-so-serious native plant society people say it is supposed to be called Thymophylla pentachaeta. No matter the name, it is incredibly drought and heat tolerant. It blooms all year if it gets a little water. It reseeds itself gently in my garden, so during rainy seasons I often have a golden carpet in my desert landscaping. And, it has a very strong medicinal odor. I like it, but Dyssodia means bad-smelling. Some botanists must not have liked it.

The cage is to keep rabbits from eating a small Fouquieria formosa. Our native ocotillo is F. splendens. This species is from farther south in México. It grows more like a small tree than does our ocotillo, which resembles an upside-down cat-o'-9-tails.

Its flowers are a truer red than the orangey-red of the ocotillo.

The shrub with whitish leaves near my truck is Encelia farinosa, another daisy. It drops its leaves during drought, leaving a bunch of dry sticks. When it rains, the shrub leafs out and blooms profusely, with huge clusters of small, brilliant yellow daisies held on long stalks above, and completely obscuring, the foliage. You can see I haven't been a good gardener who dead-heads the old stalks. This plant reseeds wildly in gardens here. It rots if it gets too much water, or if grown in acid medium/water.





I sawed off a reasonable chunk. Things to consider: How big do I want the plant to become, and how big a plant/mount will I be able to lift in 5-10 years?



I drilled a hole through the branch near the intended top. I tore a lot of the bark on the way out. The dried wood was so hard I had to first drill a small pilot hole, then use the larger bit. I also goofed and used a too-large bit for the final hole. I should have used a drill bit slightly larger than twice the diameter of the wire for the hanger.



I scale the wire to mount size.





I put the wire through the hole from back to front. The smaller hole seen on the front view is from a boring beetle. Downed wood here is full of such holes.

I want the hook for hanging behind the mount. The idea is to push the short end of the wire through the hole from back to front; crimp the end of the wire back on itself for about 3/4" / 2cm of doubled wire, which will not pull back through the hole; and yank it tightly into the hole. This will not pull through.



My hole is too large, and the doubled wire will pull right through the hole. I looped the wire around an old bolt so it wouldn't pull through. This will be facing forward, so it will be visible. My thinking is that people looking at another magnificent orchid I grew won't notice the bolt.



The right-handed tin snip I used to cut the wire. The water-pump wrench I used to bend it into the hook shown.

Continued in the second part.