Neofinitia Benetongu sick

[Alys]

Hello, I received my first and only neo in June of '21. It was in sphagnum moss in the usual Japanese manner. Everything seemed to be going well and it produced a couple of new leaves and a new growth. Fall and winter came and it started to just sit there. Then a growth fell off and some leaves looked bad and fell off. I thought I must be over watering so I followed several care sheets and began to let it dry out until crispy. It started to shrivel up. Today I watered it and decided to take it out of it's pot and pull all of the moss off. The goods is that it has microscopic root coming. All the rest are dead. Guess I was right about the over watering. What should I do now? Any any all comments are appreciated. I will say that I'm inclined to put it in a small clay pot with a little bit of bark mix. If so how much water?

[estación seca]

I'm not an expert on them but mine stay alive. Neos suffer terribly when wet or moist and cool. They can go many months with no damage when dry. Coming into early fall, if you can't keep them warm, you need to let them get crisp dry and only lightly moisten during warm weather in winter. Soaking the moss once during cool weather may be enough to kill them.

Try and post a photo of what you have left. Would you be able to keep it very warm and humid, or will it need to stay in your house at cooler temperatures?

There is a Vanda alliance - Neofinetia forum here, accessible from the left yellow menu. Browse through some of the threads to get some thoughts.

[camille1585]

I once recieved a Neofinetia in a similar state as yours in terms of roots. It has 2 short roots and the rest were dead. I potted it up in a small pot with bark, and then top dressed the pot with a small layer of sphagnum. I sprayed the sphagnum layer nearly daily (letting it get crispy in between) and after a few months a ton of new roots appeared and slowly found their way down into the bark. The plant is now happy, healthy and thriving.

In the future, even if kept indoors over the winter, Neos do much better when sparsely watered. They are quite resistant to drying out and can bounce back from too little water (leaves shriveling) but rarely survive overwatering. Most of mine are in Japanese sphag mounds and I don't give them a single proper watering through the winter. I use a spray bottle to heavily mist the outside of the mounds or surface of the bark, usually every 2-3 days. Once spring arrives and temperatures warm up I slowly reintroduce normal watering.

If kept cool in the winter (they'll bloom better) then watering should be reduced even further to just an occasional misting.

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[Alys]

Thank you for your help and Camille; your orchids and photography are lovely.