Cultivating Ramblers

[AnonYMouse]

*This is a rant disguised as an opening to a discussion.*

How do you feel about vendors (who shall remain nameless) who sell unwieldy sprawly plants? I have had multiple vendors send me plants (notably Bulbos) that are nearly impossible to pot up or mount (okay, I exaggerate but I used an awful lot of pins and clips).

One came in a pot; one pbulb in a pot, three in the air. Another bare root, three branch section that never touched media (measure off a length of aerial rhizome and clip). Imagine the way Schoenorchis gemmata grows but with less foliage.

Bulbos are crawlers and climbers and it probably is too much to expect a commercial grower to cultivate individual plants but I'm not used to these wild things! Until I started acquiring Bulbos a couple of years ago, all my plants were tidy. I have Neos whose foliage and roots are trained!

I don't know how many more Bulbos I'll acquire but I'm going to be more discerning.

[katrina]

You are experiencing something that's just a natural part of the way many bulbos grow. There really is very little one can do to "contain" some of them...especially those that grow w/longer stretches of rhizome between the growths. I wouldn't blame the vendor/grower because it is just a natural tendency of many w/in the group.

The rambler-status is exactly why I ended up eliminating many from my collection. It was not an easy decision either because I really loved some of those but it was all too clear that some just weren't meant to be grown in pots under lights. Some are better suited to mounts and greenhouse growing where they can ramble away and climb and grow all over a nice, big mount.

I held onto some of the smaller, clumpy growers which are much neater in their growth habits and far easier to "contain".

Also, side note...many of the super ramblers really don't bloom well until they get to be huge. One more reason why they aren't well suited for under lights.