They followed me home . . . Dendrobium catenatum
One of the members of our local OS was recently given a couple of huge flats of seedling Dendrobium catenatum (aka D. tosaense, aka D. stricklandianum). Also a few plastic "flasks" (tubs) with seedlings still on the agar, but ready to be deflasked. Probably he was given well over 1,000 seedlings in all.
It was more than he needed, & he gave a large number of the "plugs" in the flats away, probably 5 or 6 plants in each plug. I got several of those, as well as a couple of the tubs that needed to be moved to community pots ASAP.
So, now I have started on an adventure to try to raise as many of these little seedlings as possible, try to get them through the winter indoors, then move them back outdoors until the spring when they can get some serious grow time outdoors. I have probably 8+ community pots with these little seedlings, probably well over 100 seedlings in all (yeah, maybe closer to 200 if you count the tiny ones). The medium I decided on is a mix of fine-chopped sphagnum, fine charcoal, perlite & seedling-grade orchiata. Not too thick a layer of that over a base layer of styrofoam peanuts in each pot. I am keeping the medium damp but not constantly wet (moist, but still open). Next summer, the ones that are big enough will likely get moved on to twig mounts.
I figure that raising a big lot of seedlings like this will be good practice for raising other seedlings. Then I'll figure out what to do with them.
No photos yet - maybe later.
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