Porpax gigantea

[dgenovese1]

Magnus,

I think it is amazing! The unusualness of the plant is striking, but the flower photography you've shared here is even more fantastic!

Thanks!!!

[Magnus A]

Thank´s for all nice words!

This is an amazing little gem! The name gigantea is relative as the plant is very tiny! It flowers in the spring and the 2 leafs develope after the flower and the pseudo bulb develope during the summer. When it has matured the leafs are lost and it is dormant over the winter.
My summer temperature is 20-28 Celsius daytime and 20-23 at night.
Winter is 20-23 daytime and 17-20 night.
Humidity is very high all the time, 80 % RH.
Water every second day in summer, less in winter when dormant.

I bought mine from Orchid & more if I remember correctly, I am in Europe for you that has not seen that

[orchidegg]

Wow, that's going on my wishlist too!

[TOMMYMIAMI]

Hi Magnus, the pics are absolutely amazing. I have one Porpax Gigantea on the way, I wanted to mount it on my hygrolon cylinder in the tall vase, question, if you are growing it in terrarium or vivarium, what are the care tips, conditions, I read somewhere it is dormant plant, plus it needs to dry out between waterings, which is really not possible if mounted on the hygrolon, so I guess I will have to grow this one just mounted outside. Many thanks for the tips, it is amazing plant!

[Bud]

This is a unique orchid that is seldom presented. Thank you for showing it to us.

[euplusia]

Weird. I've never seen this one before.

[Magnus A]

Unfortunatly it slowly died away for me. I do not have any cultural suggestions as it never really flourished in my care :-(

[TOMMYMIAMI]

Sorry to hear Magnus. Well, will see, will give it a shot and hopefully it will thrive or live at my care:-)

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by Magnus A

Unfortunatly it slowly died away for me. I do not have any cultural suggestions as it never really flourished in my care :-(

You are not alone with this one. They did the same thing for me. They did ok for a little bit, and then they slowly die off. The benchmark for me has always been 2 years, regardless of the species, and I have tried maybe a total of 3 or 4 times.

These guys try to grow new shoots, but for some unknown reason, many of the new shoots die off before the new shoots make it to maturity. Very few of the new shoots reach maturity and form pseudobulbs, but the new pseudobulbs end up being only 1/10 the size of the older pseudobulb they grew out of. Again, I have a rather poor understanding of why this is.

The only thing I know for certain is that they are ridiculously slow to grow new roots. They do not produce a whole lot of them per pseudobulb either.

---------- Post added at 08:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:10 PM ----------

Originally Posted by TOMMYMIAMI

Sorry to hear Magnus. Well, will see, will give it a shot and hopefully it will thrive or live at my care:-)

You might have an advantage that those of us who don't live in tropical areas have - high humidity. It might be enough to hold over the old pseudobulbs long enough to push out new roots. I suspect that the old pseudobulbs are naturally rather short lived, probably able to live no more than 2 or 3 years - I'm not 100% certain.

One of the problems with these orchids is that the roots are pretty much all dead on many of the specimens you purchase.

[TOMMYMIAMI]

Many thanks Philip, I did research a lot online and truly didn't find much info about care and growing tips, and I did figure out this one will be a difficult one, but as you say, with our worm weather and high humidity I will try my best. I did find they like lot of light, moist but must dry out, strong air movement, high humidity. I will try to mount it on the cork, probably only little moss, since they need to dry out, and will see what will happen:-) I only can do my best:-)