Thanks everyone
I grow in porous clay pots in moss... and the clay seems to be a key to this great root growth.
Both the veitchianna and the others started very small when I got them, but veitchanna is now massive and all of them seem to move up a pot size every time I re-pot. Is it that the plant is big and so grows big roots, or is it that the roots get big allowing the plant to grow big
... I don't know as both seem to happen in conjunction with each other.
In the summer my conditions are probably too warm for these but the porous clay helps the root zone stay cool. In the winter they all go down to around 5C on a regular basis, occasionally they drop slightly cooler but never below 2C.
This is a different one, I bought this in May 2011 and kept it in a plastic pot for the first year, apart from that it was in the same place as my other masdies and got the same conditions.
Here are the roots after a year with me in a plastic pot in
June 2012.
Then I repotted in clay and here are the roots another year later in
May 2013
It's a striking difference, especially bearing in mind the repot in 2012 found a lot of dead roots, the repot in 2013 found almost none.
For me at least the clay pots really work. They have to be porous though, I've found some which look like plain clay pots but have actually been treated to be non-porous... they don't work for the masdies at all.
Who said Masdevallia don't have big root systems - I beg to disagree ;)
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