Producing a Keiki on a Cut Phal Spike?

[newflasker]

In coconut milk, there are several plant growth regulators (PGR) and some of them, cytokinins, help plant to have new shoots, flower, and keikis. Cytokinin is the main PGR of commercial orchid keikis pastes. So it's better to have coconut milk than none (water only); however, coconut milk is a good nutrient solution so you're welcome fungi and bacteria to enjoy your party too. Add few drops of Physan or peroxide hydrogen to reduce contamination. Anyway, it's fun to try and learn nothing to lost.

I'm growing 2 Phal nodes too. I am also use coconut to enhance the producing keiki. The only different is I grow in vitro. So far they grow up a little bit. Not sure they become flowers or keikis. Just cross my fingers.

[Gwenchanter]

Wow what a cool tip! Thanks newflasker. I have a coconut palm growing in my front yard about 10 feet away from the phals on my patio. We are so sick of coconut the nuts just rot on the ground. Maybe I should crack em open and mix it with some water and hydrogen peroxide and stick it in a spray bottle and give my phals a squirt now and then. Waddaya think?

[katfemme89]

Thanks for the wonderful info, newflasker. What kind of solution do you have in those jars, may I ask?

Gwenchanter, I was about to ask the same thing, lol. It seems logical... and maybe if we mist the stem with that solution then could it possibly encourage more than one keiki???

Also, what is the shelf life of coconut milk? I have the rest of the milk that I didn't use sitting in the fridge in a closed container, but is there a chance that it will spoil any time soon?

[calvin_orchidL]

This is interesting - I have heard of people being able to get keikis on cut spikes. I've tried a few times myself with no success. However, I was rooting around the old archives of my orchid society and found the following little snippet:

"Synea Tan told us how she gets keikis to grow from Phalaenopsis flower spikes. She waits until the flowers on the inflorescence are wilted and then cuts the whole inflorescence off, cuts off the tip and puts the basal portion into fertilizer water -the same she uses for continuous fertilizing for all her orchids. She puts the glass with the flower stem under lights at about 25 degrees Celsius or more. She changes the water occasionally. Most of the stems will produce a keiki in 8 to 24 months."

I wonder if cutting off the tip does anything! I have never tried it, but it may 'trick' the plant into thinking that the spike is damaged and thus may push it to making a keiki...either way,

[smg018]

When you cut off the tip, you remove the apical meristem. This produces a hormone, Auxin, which prevents the growth of other apical meristems along the shoot. Auxin inhibits the cytokinin hormones. When you remove the apical meristem, the auxin is also removed, and the cytokinins, which control cell division and differentiation, may lead to the development of keikis.

[iceicebaby]

please elaborate regarding the concentration of coconut water.
I mean do we just put the coconut milk in a sprayer and spray or dilute it?
how much of hydrogen peroxide do we add.

[l.ania]

Newflasker, how long it took from putting spikes into milk to the moment we can see on the photos?
Good luck, can't wait to see the results

[newflasker]

Hi Ania,
It takes about 3 weeks to get shoots like in pictures. Then it takes about 6 weeks to get 2 small leaves but no root yet. You need to transfer them to new media without coconut milk to get root (plain media without cytokinin or you may add 1mg/l NAA if you have it). Took another about 2 months to get root. Keep growing until they are big enough to deflask if you can. My 2 shoots became big orchid seedlings and already deflask. So instead of throwing you Phal flower stems you can propagation them to get seedlings, especially they are rare and precious orchids. Cheers, good luck

[BikerDoc5968]

Newflasker, is the cocoanut milk you are using a processed source, like from a can of cocoanut milk, or is it from the seed? Then you say that you "transfer" to new media w/o cocoanut milk to get roots to grow. What is this secondary media?

[newflasker]

Hi BikerDoc,
The right term is coconut water, coconut juice, clear not milky white. It's from fresh and young coconut. Orchid propagation and plant tissue culture use it to multiply shoots and callus because it contains many kind of hormone especially Cytokinin. The secondary media is a MS (Murashige and Skoog) media, a standard plant tissue culture media. You can use any medium you have without Cytokinin. In simple worlds, Cytokinin is good for shoot and Auxin is good for root. Too much Cytokinin prohibits root growing.