Stanhopea tigrina nigroviolacea 'The Predator' FCC/AOS arrived!
 

Got this plant today, and it is HUGE! I got it from Orchid Design, and they were great. Very friendly and helpful. They say that this is an actual division of the original awarded plant. I don't know if that is true or not, but I have no reason to think she would lie about that, and for what I paid for it, it makes sense. It had 5 spikes, but when they moved it to take pictures for the listing, she didn't put it back where it was before, and she thinks it got too much sun and not enough water and all the buds blasted, but the Orchid Design lady (I don't think I ever caught her name) was very kind. The list price was 200. She sold it to me for 150 because of the bud blast. I don't consider that necessary. The way I see it, I'm buying an orchid PLANT. It it has buds on it, great! An added bonus! But I don't expect plants to be budded (unless I order from someplace like Akatsuka who specialized in budded plants for the gift market). But anyway, that was super nice of her to give me a price break and I really appreciate it. She said it is still early in the blooming season, and I may get blooms later on anyway.

As you can see, the plant is huge, growing in all directions, over the side of the basket and then down the basket. I have no idea how to repot such a plant. Do I just drop the whole thing into a bigger basket? Do I just leave it and let it do its thing? I have no idea. My issue with the latter example is humidity. I don't have high humidity in the winter, and I'm afraid that if the roots are totally exposed, they won't grow, or maybe even dry up and die.

Anyway, it's a great plant and I feel lucky to have it. You should all check out Orchid Designs.

What a gorgeous plant, and in superb condition!

I would suggest not even thinking about repotting... let it do its thing. If spikes look crimped by the basked, just clip the offending parts to make bigger holes... it's unpredictable where they'll come out. It's well-established in all directions and that's what it wants. Just water it frequently... I water my Stahopeas pretty much daily (even more when it's hot/dry), all year around. You can't overwater them. With that much root mass, it'll be fine with whatever humidity it gets if adequately watered. And yes, based on what I know of its history (local knowledge of the cast of characters back to when it was actually awarded), that is a piece of the awarded plant. (If it was mericloned, it wasn't that long ago and the resultant plants would still be fairly small... )

Also knowing where it was originally grown (when it got awarded), it's quite temperature tolerant... in its original home, it was sufficiently inland that it got highs above 100 deg F., and lows near freezing, periods with single-digit humidity on occasion. And city water. So it's not fragile. You got a gem!

Thanks for the tips! If it can handle that kind of heat (its 97 degrees now and it's 2:40pm here) would it do better outside? The humidity is better outside. I'd have to water more often, but I don't mind. I go out there and water some of them daily anyway. I take it that it's practically impossible to overwater? I have a good tree I could hang it from where it would get filtered light. So should it go outside? It really is a spectacular plant, and I feel honored to have such a fine plant. Most of my plants are nothing special. Mericlones and unproven seedlings, and the like. This is the first plant I've ever bought that was actually something special. It makes me a little nervous, but also excited haha. My other Stanhopea has done great tho, so I'm sure if I can grow that one, I can grow this one too.

Keep in mind that our days are in the 90s, sometimes approaching 100, but nights rarely get below 75, if that make a difference.

Beautiful beast!

It certainly is a beast. I had no idea what I was getting into hahahahaha

I think it'll be fine outside... keep on the shady side and water the heck out of it. I don't think it particularly cares about cool nights, will happily tolerate them but doubt that it requires them. For the whole genus, they resent underwatering (tend to defoliate, probably a mechanism for conserving water in droughts...) but I don't think that overwatering is possible. (I have one in particular, that is on the soggy side, and is doing the best of all) Remember, they are in baskets, so get plenty of air no matter how wet they are.

Hi Scott, Roberta is 100% right with all that she has written ...

However, your plant has *REALLY* outgrown it's basket (see photo) ...

When one of my 80 Stanhopea plants has come to this, I cut the wire basket slowly and carefully into small pieces
and remove them from the plant ...

Then I take a sufficiently lager wire basket, line it with loose coconut fiber and place the plant higher up, securing it
in place to the rim of the basket, so that the plant does not wobble. The rootball is not to be disturbed.

Then I fill up all spaces between the lining and the rootball with ordinary moss , not Sphagnum.

On top of it all goes NUTRICOTE, because Stanhopea plants need
*MUCH* fertilizer and much water.

The process may take an hour or so :):) ...

If you repot and a piece falls off, let me know! I'd love to help you recoup the cost of this plant. ;);)

Plastic pots like this one are a lot easier to "deconstruct" than wire ones or wood ones. it's pretty easy to clip away enough of the plastic, a bit at a time, to slide the pieces out. (If some pieces of basket get left behind, no problem, the goal is simply to let the plant expand) A diagonal cutter works very well. Then the plant can go into a LARGE, shallow wire basket, as Manfred describes. If you don't have coconut fiber (or it still falls out of the holes), a few layers of newspaper can be used - over a year or so it will disintegrate, but by that time the moss and roots will have molded to the shape of the basket so that they'll more or less stay put.

Great advice about the newspaper. I have also used brown paper bags

Thanks guys for all the tips! I will have you know I have successfully repotted the plant. As suggested, I snipped away the plastic basket, leaving some pieces behind that I couldn't get to, and I put it in a big shallow basket that I lined with coconut fiber. The temperatures here finally cooled down a bit, and we've finally been getting some rain, and it is growing well, with lots of new growths and lots of root growth. Thanks everybody!

JScott, did this plant ever bloom for you in the late summer or early fall of last year? I am curious to see some photos of the blooms if you were able to take any (assuming that it flowered--and at that size, it certainly looks like it's capable of putting on an excellent display). Thank you!

Steve

No, it never did bloom any more last year, but it has grown like crazy since then. I just put it back outside for the year this week, so hopefully before too long we'll have some blooms :)

For what it's worth, mine tends to bloom July or August, so that might help with the expectation. The FCC award was given at a late June judging (1996) so could bloom a bit earlier than my experience. That is one gorgeous plant.

Good to know. Thank you. I only have experience with them blooming much later.

Hopefully you will see some flowers this spring, JScott. Good luck!

I was privileged to see 'Predator' when it was brought in for judging. (One of the orchid clubs that I was regularly attending met at the same place as one of the Pacific South judging centers) Very early in my "orchid growing career". It was huge, and really made an impression! Given that flowers are open for only a very short time, a stroke of luck that the peak of the bloom occurred on on judging night. Been a long time, but I remember it very vividly.

I bought it in July, and it would have been in bloom then if not for all the moving around and relocating, so I was expecting it to be around that time, give or take. I actually hope it blooms either sooner or later than that, because I'll be in Brazil from June 21st until August 3, and wouldn't that be something if it bloomed, and I missed it 🤣🤣🤣. I know they can bloom multiple times throughout their blooming season, and it's a big plant, so I'm optimistic that I'll at least see part of it 😁

You could always just leave it with me for the summer. Sounds like you could miss the blooms. I'd take pictures for ya. And maybe even give the plant back when you got back home. :biggrin:

Has happened to me many times... :_(

Okay, I've had this for three years now, and it spikes every year with 6 or 8 or even 10 spikes, but the buds blast before they get a chance to open. It's very frustrating that it has spiked three summers, but I've still never flowered.

The only thing I can figure out is that when it starts to spike, that's about the time of year when temperatures in North Texas start to get really hot (around a hundred degrees or even hotter) Could this heat be the problem here? I thinking about bringing it indoors once it starts to spike to see if that helps. Does anybody think this might be a good plan, or is there something else I should be looking? Sorry to revive an old thread, but this seemed appropriate since there's already so much information here that I didn't want to repeat in a new thread.[COLOR="Silver"]

---------- Post added at 11:23 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:21 AM ----------

This is an old thread I have revived. Please see the updated information at the bottom

That is REALLY frustrating. Yes, I think that the sudden heat may be a factor. Bringing in may help. The other consideration is water... With those temperatures, daily or even twice daily watering may be necessary. Stanhopeas do hate to dry out. Also, if it is dry, you'll get some evaporative cooling. But you may need to just bring it inside. Once the spikes have started to develop, they likely don't need the variation of temperature, light, etc that they get outside.

Now, I 'm just guessing... since my conditions are so different. Hopefully, some of our members in Texas and other hot areas will jump in with suggestions.

This is 100% the problem and why I don’t grow Stanhopea here in Texas, even though it’s one of my favorite genera.

Ooooo… so what temperature would you recommend bringing them in at? I have 2 outdoors in Texas (Stanhopea connata 'Orangeade X tigrina 'Predator' FCC/AOS and Stanhopea tigrina ‘Sanbar black on white’). Both of these are very large plants and I hope will bloom this year.

Or, it is possible to leave them outdoors but water everyday? I also want to install a misting system this summer in my shade house.
https://i.imgur.com/LkmCete.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/9uM3e9K.jpg

Don't know the ideal temperature to bring them in... Given the size, the later the better, of course. (Maybe you could hang them over the bathtub to make watering less messy) I suspect that as long as you can give them shade, the temperature becomes less critical if you can keep them wet. I'd definitely defer to anybody who grows these in a truly warm climate... mine grow under a much more benign temperature range so I don't know where the limits might be. I know that they are grown quite well much farther inland in southern California, where there are triple-digit (F) days, but nights do still cool off, and June/early July they still get some June gloom. Thinking of the Huntington Botanical Gardens.

So go for shade and copious water, misting if you can, you might just get away with it! Those look like really healthy plants. Wishing you success!

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In fact, thinking about it, you might send an email to Brandon Tam at the Huntington and find out what he does. It's not quite Texas, but summers get pretty hot there and the Stanhopeas do quite well. If you can't find his email in Orchids (or other AOS source) or in the Orchid Digest, PM me and I can provide.

Thanks for the info. Hopefully I can get a misting system installed in the next month. All the weather articles I’ve read say El Niño should make for a cooler and wetter summer 🤞🏼. I will say it’s been a fairly mild start to spring and summer so far, but definitely by July we will probably be hitting triple digits and 80s at night.

Last summer I did in fact water it twice daily, and have resumed that now that the weather is getting warmer. I'm sure that helps a great deal, but it doesn't seem like it helped enough :( And it grows hanging under my porch where it doesn't get any direct light.

I'll contact this Brandon Tam and find out what I can find out. Thanks for your help, everyone! I haven't been on here in a long time, but I know I can always get good info when I ask something here.

Welcome back! Brandon is the manager of the Huntington Botanical Gardens orchid collection. Extremely knowledgeable, and very responsive. He has contributed often to both Orchids and Orchid Digest. And the Stanopeas in the collection are awesome - and many of them grown outdoors.

They'll take our heat and grow just fine, but the flowers won't open after our daytime temps get to 93 degrees or so. No amount of shade or water matters. Trust me, I've tried. :_(

I wonder if the night temps are the culprit... That's the big difference between Texas heat and California heat. The inland valleys in southern California routinely get a lot hotter than 93 deg F in the summer. (I spent about 25 years of my life in that area, and hope to never do it again :roll:) But summer nights are only rarely above the mid 70's F and usually in the 68-72 deg F range.

Brandon Tam spoke to our society a few years back. You can find my lecture notes with an advanced search on his name and my username (or partial username if you can't type the accent.) The gist is the Huntington has their Stans in baskets of moss in the coolest part of the coolest greenhouse, and they're watered automatically twice a day on a drip system with RO water.

It's very possible!

I wonder if one of the “Kool Log” things might work or something similar. I had been looking at them because I wanted to attempt a Masdevallia Veitchiana. I wouldn’t mind trying to grow them indoors, but I just have terrible lighting inside my house and grow lights just produce so much heat when it’s already 100 degrees outside.

I don't see how you would be able to grow a Stanhopea on a cool log, which lends itself more to small things. If "outside" is the better environment for growing, and spikes start to develop, maybe grow it outside until it starts to get hot, then move it indoors in the A/C for blooming. (Once it has gotten the spike going, a month or so of less-than-ideal light probably won't bother it)

Maybe so, I had just seen on their website they had grown and bloomed many species of Gongoras. Minus the flower spike not growing out of the bottom, I thought maybe those had similar enough growth habits that it could be done.

Given the size of the Stanhopeas, not sure how that would work. Another consideration... evaporative cooling doesn't work very well (if it does anything at all) in high humidity. (Which is why misting and extra watering hasn't worked well for others who live in your area) Since the cool-log concept depends on evaporative cooling, that factor would also work against you.

Speaking of the size of Stanhopeas, mine came to me in a four inch plastic basket, and it has now almost completely filled a 12 in basket.

It's so good to hear from you! It's been so long! Glad we are both still around causing trouble.

I want to throw my 2 cents into the stanhopea tigrina blooms do not like mid 90's temps discussion. I have noticed that they also do not like 50 percent sun exposure in the heat of summer in North FL. I have the 'Glory of Mexico' variety and it spiked and tried to bloom last summer and flowers barely almost fully opened and quickly faded away. It is currently in spike with 4 and I will bring to my local OS display pavilion where it will be shadier and see if it can mature the blooms and will report.

That's definitely possible. You are exactly right about summer temps in Texas not getting much cooler at night. I have so many good suggestions, I'm not really sure where to start. This is right about the time of year spikes start to show, so I need to decide what to do lol.

And seriously y'all, thanks for all your help with this darn plant over the years. I think I started this thread like three years ago, and you're still here trying to help lol