Wrinkled bulbs

[mandirose1]

My husband came home yesterday with an oncidium. It's a Wilsonara "Rayna". It's my first oncidium.

The bulbs are looking quite shriveled even though the medium in damp/moist. I have phals and have repotted new to me plants even with blooms with good success so far. (No blooms have fallen.) Are oncidiums as hardy? I have a feeling this poor thing is suffocating so I'm hesitant to just leave it in its media to dry out. It was a grocery store purchase and the medium looks like hell.

Any advice?

I'll post a picture in a few minutes.

---------- Post added at 12:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:12 PM ----------



That link should lead to my photobucket and there are a few more pictures.
Tell me anything I should know! Thank you so much for any and all help.

[jcec1]

I would leave the plant as is, repotting may cause the blooms to drop. Oncidiums need to be kept moister than phalaenopsis, and if anything I would use a finer grade bark, as I think Colorado has low humidity, and these plants do not like to dry out. The pseudobulbs look fine to me. The best time to repot an oncidium is when the new growths are producing new roots.

[mandirose1]

It's somewhat hard to see in that photo but the entire plant is covered in lots of little brown and black dots, so I think it might also have fungus?

[dbarron]

I would bet on it suffering from overwatering and a poor medium. At least peek and see if there look to be any living roots. Normally these produce copious roots, so it should be pretty obvious.

I think...I would repot it into something fresh and chunky (well-aerated), inspect the roots..if they look bad, you may wish to wait a few days before watering.

It's hard to wait, because the poor thing is suffering from lack of water now...but you don't want to cause crown rot or root the roots further.

[mandirose1]

Yep, I'm repotting here in a few minutes. I got some fungicide that I'm going to spray the poor thing with and I'm going to put it in a mostly bark mixture with some bits of sphagnum.

The blooms aren't a huge concern to me. Obviously they don't last forever anyway. They're looking a little rough up close too.

What can I say? My husband is a sweetheart. Just doesn't know about these things.