Deflasking Habenaria Medusa cross

[orchidsarefun]

I use T5 lights - its the smaller 3 shelf Gardeners Supply stand. The pots are at least 12-14 inches from lights.
My home is air-conditioned with the temp set at a max 75f. That means mostly warmer under lights. If nights are cooler than 75f, I open windows to let in some fresh air.
No bottom heat.
There are around 40 plantlets currently - the largest have a 3in leafspan already. Out of curiosity I dug up a small bulb ( under 1/4 inch ) that wasn't sprouting - it was still firm - so I am leaving all no-growth pots alone for the next 2 months. Growth vs no-growth is around 2-1. I'd be happy with a 50% survival rate.
I may just put a couple outdoors as an experiment. The one parent is outdoors and is growing on strongly.

[orchidsarefun]

Update.
Growth showing in the compot with some of the tiniest tubers. Hopefully I can grow them on....




Fungus gnat nemesis. I had to remove 2 butterworts ( not drosera ! ) to enable the population to recover


Happily growing on. Does anyone know if these bloom off last year's growth ( like daffodils ) or this year's ? If current year I would be a little disappointed as I would like to see what influence the foliage colour has, if any, on blooms.

[No-Pro-mwa]

Some are starting to get some size to them.

[orchidsarefun]

2 weeks later. These grow very quickly once past the first 2 leaves. The one in the front looks like it may have a spike ! I love the variation in foliage that this cross has produced.


---------- Post added at 08:59 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:55 AM ----------

its difficult to keep the foliage unblemished - a tiny drop of water has a negative impact.
Close-up of the ( hopefully ) spiking plant.

[lotis146]

Awesome! Great growing, I like the leaves too. Thanks for the update. Should be interesting to see your spike.

[orchidsarefun]

spike is abut 2in tall. No other spikes evident in the other seedlings. Interesting to note that the seedling spiking had the biggest tuberoid so it may well be that tuberoids have to reach a minimum size before blooming. I can also see roots through the clear pot on this one.
In the group shot you can see the spike - top left. Behind it is a seedling that has a white picotee to its foliage - its very attractive. Yep - the spiking seedling also has picotee foliage, but not as pronounced.
It's almost impossible to keep the foliage blemish free and I am beginning to think that the only way is to grow them outdoors ( constant breeze ) or have a fan nearby.

[AvantGardner]

Awesome thread and congrats on the success so far!

[orchidsarefun]

It turns out that the cross wasn't successful and these were all Habenaria lindleyana - the pod parent. I had read that lindleyana self-pollinate freely and that could be the reason....

The photos show a plant I dug up to store for Winter - the bulb that is. The bulb is about 1 1/2 inches long.
The plant that flowered first had 3 big bulbs of about 1 inch a-piece !
Lesson learned - the bulbs are much larger, and more numerous , in the plants grown in the small square pots - as opposed to the longer see-through pots. The potting mix was perfect.

I should see how many bulbs I get in the next month as the rest of the plants die off. There were a couple that had virtually no bulb growth, I will try and store these too. Current count is 11 bulbs from 9 pots. ( 6 of 1 inch plus )

I'm going to store some in perlite and some in sphag.

[Tindomul]

Fantastic thread! I didn't think any orchid would bloom in the first year of growth. The blooms on this are nice though. Congrats.

When you say self-fertile, do you mean that the plant does not need pollen to produce seed?

[orchidsarefun]

"Self-fertile". Not sure what I mean. I think it's Phrag wallisii that self pollinates before bloom actually opens. With this cross I definitely removed the existing pollinia before pollinating with medusa pollen. And yet.......
I don't know what happened. I've repeated the cross this year, VERY carefully so we'll see.

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