Fdk after dark black pearl
 

Hi fellows!!
For my birthday I decided to make to myself "some" gifts..
Obviously orchid gifts ;)

One of them is a Fdk After dark Black pearl.
The plant is pretty big, as you can see in the pics.
I read the care instruction in Fred Clarke's site but I have a doubt.
The plant is yellowing (does this verb exist?) the leaves, so I suppose it's enetering in dormancy, but it's making a floreal stem.. so, here the doubt:

Keep watering (a bit less) until at least 2 flowers open or stop watering?

Thank you friends :waving

Don't stop watering yet, it still has green leaves. Reduce watering now but don't stop watering until the last leaf has turned all yellow and brown.

Thank you David!

I agree with David: mine is starting to shed it's lower leaves about now and has buds of your size too. It is pretty normal for many Catasetums to start developing buds when the leaves start yellowing/dropping off.

In my growing environment, the first plants start getting yellowing leaves around now and the last ones tend to drop leaves in December. I tend to reduce watering now. In January-February I hardly water. From March, the first new buds arrive and I can start watering a bit more until the growing season starts again.

Thank you for your post Lars, I'll make treasure of them both.

Filippo

At this stage in the growth cycle, I always stopped watering at this point. You can go either way, but if you have cool temps at night (ie. less than 55F), you should stop watering completely or you run the risk of rot. If your temps are still warmer than this at night, then you can keep watering. Either way, your plant will be completely dormant in few weeks at most. The flowers use energy stored in the bulbs and do not depend on water taken in by the roots, so don't worry about that when deciding whether to water or not.

ditto and well said Steve.

Steve is right....this plant is quite expensive here comes to a couple of hundreds or I would have owned one....post pictures of the blooms they are quite dark almost black

Some news: stem is growing and I suspect a new one is sprouting!
There is only 1 leaf hal green half yellow. Now minimum night temperatures are 15°C (59 °F).. at 12-10°C I'll bring it inside (18-19°C - 66 °F).

Looks great! Should be a good show!

Fully agree with Steve, this is a good time to stop watering...

Bud, check Fred's website... The clon 'Black Pearl' is just $100.. And you can get an unbloomed plant for $30 ;). The times of this cross having scandalous prices is gone since quite a while ago... Now, go for one! :-)

Thank You, Ramón !!!!

you are right, I got a near blooming plant for $30....I am always a big fan of SVO

Here is mine ....

Thank guys, it's all her will :) I just watch! Yesterday I saw a strange thing. This is my first catasetinae, so I haven't experience. I've read on Fred Clarke's site that these plants produce flowers and THEN new growth and root (after roots are 3-4 inches, start watering).
Today I saw this, so... what?!??

Sometimes the flower spike will produce roots too! Weird plants!!

yeap, tell me about it, sometimes the base of the spike will develop into a small underdevelp bulb as well and the plant is only crosses among catasetums.

I have no experience of these but dens. Can do the same thing. It's almost like a half keiki half spike on those. On the Dens if I leave them after flowering other growths appear next to them turning them in to keiki. No idea if that can happen here.

update!!!

Wow! nicely maturing!

any more updates ?
I recently won one of these at an auction. Its blooming and has a unique scent in the morning.
Anyway I e-mailed Fred Clarke and he said to me to only water when the media is dry and then stop watering by Jan 1st completely.

Here they are!
Unfortunely, taking the plant inside with heat (8-9°C to 17-19°C; 47-48°F to 63-66°F) let some blossoms to drop. They're getting darker: these pics are maid 2 days ago and now they're darker. The second stem is getting bigger and will flower about 2 weeks after the oldest one.
Have a nice day!

Filippo

PS Edit: a new pic just done added: is it opening!?!?

Nice! If I recall correctly, mine took a long time to fully open, but it stayed in bloom for many weeks.

It'll probably take another weeks untitl they open. Each flower lasts about 3 weeks, but they tend to be darkest at the beginning and then get a maroon reddish tinge as they age.

Ooh! Ooh! I know it's possible you posters already know this but, no one's mentioned it so... since these postings occurred, the AOS published their special supplement, October 2012, "Cycnoches Species & Hybrids." In it, Fred Clarke publishes an article entitled, "Growing Cycnoches as Mother Nature Would."

He provides exTREMEly detailed (nonpareil) instructions, photographically illustrated, on how to deal with the unique dormancy requirements of Cycnoches and the group of plants containing them, the Catasetinae. He says in the article, it applies equally to Catasetum, Mormodes, Clowesia & their offspring, i.e. ..."Fredclarkeara." I mean, if you want to know how to grow that genus, may as well go to the guy it's named after, eh? So combine the beginning info from the "sunsetvalleyorchids.com" site with the AOS Supplement - available for a few dollars from the AOS website (they're advertising all the supplements in the AOS Journal this month)

I'll summarize the Bullet Points as briefly as possible:

SPRING: Do NOT water when new growth is just starting.

LATE SPRING: Continue to withhold watering when new growth and new roots are still about the same size as their most recent (dormant) bulbs.

SUMMER: Begin watering when the new growth & roots are 3-5 inches long.

AUTUMN & EARLY WINTER: Yellowing leaves indicate the first signs of dormancy. At this time, reduce watering by 50 percent.

DORMANCY: Do NOT water when all the leaves fall; plant is dormant.

My Fredclarkara After Dark is just now now opening a stalk of some 30 flowers yet, there are NO leaves left. They were full and green just last week & the buds were not open and, within a few days, the leaves yellowed & dropped very quickly & now the buds are like half-open tulips yet, Fred says, "NO WATER!" It's going to bloom for weeks, even months yet to come but, I'll also trust the guy who created the genus. He plants in 100% New Zealand Sphagnum (supported by some styro popcorn) so, although I ended water last week, that sphagnum is still medium moist and, as the plant is dormant, the moss should retain enough moisture to satisfy the blooms for their lifetime.

Maybe I'll send some photos when it's fully open...

The AOS special does not yet seem to be available on-line, but seems to say what the articles here say. Although I always struggle with restraining myself and may start watering a little too early.

Hi Lars, There's a place in Fred's articles in the Supplement where he addresses that urge. He said it's the hardest thing - it just seemed totally unnatural to withhold that water, like you said but, he says you've got to suppress the urge and starve them or they'll root-rot, & who needs that? He says the hardest is to restrain yourself in Late Spring; he says you MUST withhold water into the Late Spring until both growth & roots are over 3 inches long. I won't have too much problem with this because I grow various Amorphophallus &, you just have to learn to get disciplined & not give them water until they tell you... & they'll stay disturbingly dormant for up to 3 years!

He said, also, that he divides all these plants bigger than 4 pseudobulbs. He said once they get bigger than 4 pseudobulbs, the backbulbs just rot & that's pointless, as they would continue to grow when the plant is smaller.

He told me that, in fact, the outRAGEOUS Cyc. cooperi "SVO III" FCC/AOS that won a CCE, put out that famous flowerfall of 100+ large blooms on only 3 pseudobulbs... I was duly impressed!