Is my Cl. Rebecca Northern 'Mikkabi' flowering late or starting spring growth?
 

Hi all, new here and new to clowesia, or any orchid that likes dormancy. I got the plant at the beginning of January almost exactly as pictured, except the leaf stubs were very much still green.

Today I noticed two new growths that are at different verticle heights on the pseudobulb. At first I thought it was new growth for the season but I'm thinking now it may be spiking late. The greenhouse conditions it was likely in before I bought it probably postponed dormancy leading to late spikes.

I was also under the impression young bulbs like this tend not to flower. The whole bulb is about 4 inches tall. My questions are:

1. If they're flower spikes, do I let it flower and do nothing, or cut them to conserve energy for spring growth? How will this impact the upcoming growing season?

2. Can pseudobulbs grow at different verticle positions on the parent pseudobulb? If yes, how do you pot that?

3. When the time comes to repot, can I repot in 100% sphagnum?

Thanks in advance!

First, Welcome!

This is bloom time for Cl. Rebecca Northen. Totally dormant, leafless pseudobulbs, and the flowers seem to come from nowhere. (Sleeping, maybe dreaming of pollination :biggrin:) Beautiful and fragrant. Don't be tempted to water - it's still sleeping. New growth will start soon after flowering. And the general rules for Catasetinae apply, no water until new roots are about 3 inches long (and the new leaves will be opening out, 2 months at least maybe more so be patient).

You'll get a much better sense of what it's going to do once the new growths start to emerge, and you can repot but don't dally, you want to get any repotting done before the new roots get going. You could actually do it now. Just pull it out of the pot, wrap some some sphagnum around it, and stick it in a pot that is a bit bigger. (Don't worry about cleaning anything or removing old roots, you'll likely harm good ones) These don't mind being potbound if you underestimate. Sphag is fine - I use it for all my Catasetinae until they get quite large when I switch to small bark. It's a good medium because once they get into active growth it's hard to keep them wet enough, sphagnum works well for that.

They can flower on quite small plants - I have a Cl. rosea (3/4 of the parentage of Rebecca Northen so similar habits), that I got last fall, one pseudobulb, and it's in spike.

Dubs- I don't know what #1 in your pictures is but #2 is absolutely a spike starting.

Fred Clarke came to speak in NH this summer and I did a little pre-order with him one of which was the plant in topic here. He initially responded he had some but they were not large enough to sell so I was disappointed.

To my surprise, when I went to the meeting and picked up my order, he said to me "There's a surprise in there for you. I realized you're probably going to take these to Florida with you so I grabbed the largest RN I had and stuck it in the bag. It's not really ready to go but as long as you take it south, it should have enough grow time left in the season to develop a good bulb."

Well, he wasn't kidding it was small. It had 1 tiny backbulb (maybe an inch tall) and the new bulb wasn't much larger.

Fast forward 6 months and here it is. I was stunned to see the spike starting on such a small plant. I was hoping it would survive and maybe in a couple years but 8 buds on this very immature plant? How cool is that? Can't wait for them to open now.

This is my grace Dunn, just a bit further along than Dubs’ RN. Single bulb from SVO’s august offering.

Awesome, thanks for all the info, especially on repotting since that's coming up next. I'll have a much better idea of what it's doing after keeping it for a while, but I'm trying not to kill it while I figure it out. That's easy right now, but figuring out what's a spike, repotting, new pseudobulbs and roots, simulating monsoon season and abatement, etc. means there's potential to mess up later. It reminds me of the first rebloom I got on my phal years ago, there's a ton of new information to learn (which is exciting to me, haha)!

8 buds is great, I get no credit for whatever flowers mine produces but I'm glad I get to see (and smell) what is in store if I manage to keep it successfully. I also didn't pay premium for a spiking plant, so I feel like I got more of a deal, haha.

I was also not expecting any flowers until next year at the earliest, so very cool of these plants to surprise us!

Awesome, can't wait to see how mine goes. Mine is not very far off schedule either, which is good to know as adapting a dormancy schedule would only add to the learning curve.

Catasetinae "reinvent" themselves every year and so do things relatively rapidly compared to other orchids. So in some ways they are easier to master than the slow ones, if you observe and let the plants "tell" you what they want and when. Just be patient... it is so tempting to start watering when those new little green growths show themselves... put the watering can where you can't reach it and put your hands in your pockets so you won't be tempted to water too soon... once they get going, you can water them heavily (like a monsoon). Then, they grow so fast you can almost see them do it, time for extra fertilizer. In the fall , the leaves start to get ratty-looking, that tells you to start backing off. So watch them and "listen" to what they're telling you.:biggrin:

Update: my nubs are developing nubs. They're really hard to see in the pics but the base of both of my nubs have these lighter colored protrusions forming.

I swear they weren't there yesterday. Really excited to see what else pops out in the coming weeks! Care is still no care, I just like taking photos of it.

Sometimes flower spikes put out roots as if they were growths. hard to tell yet what you've got.

The plant will "Tell" you what it's doing... all in good time.