Missing Phal

[Shadeflower]

So the weirdest thing has happened, I just cannot find one of my orchids.
I don't know when I lost it or where it has gone but I have looked everywhere and I just can't find it.
I don't know if I should accept it's gone, whether I accidentally lost it without remembering or if I misplaced it.
It's a complete mystery.

This is the last picture I have of it in November

I'd only gotten it to flower for the first time last year and was wondering why I hadn't seen it in a while, now it has vanished.

So if anyone has seen it , let me know

[PaphMadMan]

You know how it goes. Some innocent young Phal starts hanging with the wrong crowd (Epidendrums usually, but you have to watch those Catasetum delinquents too) and starts doing seedy things to pay for their developing KelpMax habit. Then they get in trouble with the Masdevallia cartel and have to go into hiding. All you can do is post "lost" pictures and try to track cell phone and credit card use, and cry for their lost youth. We feel your pain.

[Diane56Victor]

I watched a YouTube video recently where the poster said he saw a bird fly off with a smallish orchid.
He said it happens occasionally during nesting time, especially if they were potted or mounted in spaghnum moss.
Didnt make him less annoyed though!

[Paphluvr]

If it was a Tradescantia zebrina instead of an orchid I could certainly understand it.

[Leafmite]

Do you have other Phals? Might a tag have gotten unthinkingly moved?
Do your plants go outside? Is it possible an animal ate it or ran off with it?
Do you set your orchids in the pots of other plants to help with humidity?

Things do happen, especially if you put orchids outside.
I have had miniature plants vanish, likely taken by birds or squirrels. I had a Vanilla eaten down to the roots (and a few other plants eaten close to it). I even left a Vanda outside one autumn and found it...too late. One of my dogs liked to carry the orchids (in their pots) around the yard and I would need to go looking for them. When I potted in bark and the clear plastic pots, big storms would blow away many of my orchids and I would sometimes find them a few houses away (thankfully, lava rock and basket pots do not blow away).

Indoors, I lost many of my miniature orchids to bush snails (which I dearly hate). They just ate the entire miniature plant.

[Shadeflower]

Originally Posted by Leafmite

One of my dogs liked to carry the orchids (in their pots) around the yard and I would need to go looking for them.

That was one of the first things I thought of doing as I just can't wrap my head around it. I have lost phals but this one had two flower spikes, had really good roots but sadly I have resigned to having lost it.

I have thought back and I know I had it in November, then I did a repot in January and I am pretty sure I never saw it again after that so during my big repotting this one seems to have gone missing. I found it's tag - that is actually what prompted it all. I was like wait a minute if this tag is here, where is the plant it belongs to??

If my dog did go carrying it off which is something he is known to do (a shoe, a brush when I'm cleaning to get me to stop cleaning and go look for it etc) it will have been sometime in January and me looking for it in the garden now would be a bit pointless but I still had a look lol.

And it could have been worse, it could have been one out of my favourite pile

[JScott]

LOL this has happened to me. I'm looking for a certain plant and it's just not there, no matter how hard I look! I often don't find them until they are in bloom, and I think, "Oh! There it is!" hahaha

---------- Post added at 10:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:11 AM ----------

Oh, and I'm pretty sure I had an orchid thief at one time. In the house I have now, I have the perfect tree cover in the backyard, so my plants are there, but in the house before this, the plants had to go in the front of the house. Occasionally I had a plant I knew was in boom, and I'd go outside to tend the plants and that plant would be gone! It didn't happen a lot, just two or three times, but it still sure did make me mad. Who steals a plant? What kind of person steals a plant? I mean come on... you can by them everywhere .

[Shadeflower]

really doesn't surprise me JScott but it isn't right. My boss caught his neighbour stealing his garden gnome.

I mean cmon a gnome? An well cared for orchid on the otherhand can be quite tricky to find in shops.
I've resigned to not buying crappy plants anymore so finding a good specimen can actually be a challenge. But you'd have to ask if they would know how to care for it properly if they are the light fingered type or if they would just throw it in the trash after it bloomed which would make me more mad thinking that would be the outcome.

[JScott]

Originally Posted by Shadeflower

really doesn't surprise me JScott but it isn't right. My boss caught his neighbour stealing his garden gnome.

I mean cmon a gnome? An well cared for orchid on the other hand can be quite tricky to find in shops.
I've resigned to not buying crappy plants anymore so finding a good specimen can actually be a challenge. But you'd have to ask if they would know how to care for it properly if they are the light fingered type or if they would just throw it in the trash after it bloomed which would make me more mad thinking that would be the outcome.

See, I'm with you there too on the quality plants. I don't buy cheap grocery stores orchids anymore (not that there's anything wrong with that. Those inexpensive plants are a great way to cut your teeth for growing orchids, and if you see one you like, absolutely get it, and feel no shame. You should feel free to enjoy the things you like).

I'm a teacher, and I like to keep a blooming orchid on my desk at school, but sometimes I don't have a plant that is in bloom that is the right size to place on my desk, in which case I might buy a grocery store Phal. I usually let them bloom twice. If by the second bloom, I'm not wowed by it, I give it away, but I have acquired a few that way that I ended up really loving and keeping). So any plant stolen from me is likely to be a difficult one to find, one that is highly awarded, which translates to ones that are expensive, and so what really burned me about it was that one, they'll probably going to kill this special plant of mine, and two, I'm probably not going to be able to replace it, or if I do, I'll pay a premium price.

It really is a truly despicable kind of person that would steal a plant off somebody's front porch.