SO the newbie. Dried out air tubers?

[myia2003]

Hi stephy here, have a denrobium and a phal that i got from a friend, the deny is from my grandfather who has over two hundred ordchid plants in his green house. He is the orchid god!! LOL anyway he wanted me to try my hand at it even though i have a black thumb. Had some questions, the phal i repotted had some "air tubers" from what he said, i hope to have come picks but they are drying out ive misted them with a water bottle ive had them in the bathroom and steamed them am i doing the right thing should i do it longer or more often they just dont seem healthy, the one in contact with the soil that i can see are a nice green color, are the roots above the surface in the air really suposed to be under the soil? Any advice? Don't wanna ask grandpa a million question but also don't wanna kill the gift he gave me even though he said i could bring it back. BTW this forum seems really cool, definately helping me with my new obcession.

[kalanchoe]

Hello Myia2003, welcome to Orchid Board!

I'm guessing that the "air tubers" you're referring to aerial roots. It is normal for orchids to put out some roots that grow into the air, so to answer one of your questions: they are not "supposed" to be under the soil. Orchid roots have a white, spongey outer layer called velamen that absorbs water. When the root is wet, the velamen is soaked with water and the root will appear green- that's why the roots in your soil are a different color from your aerial ones; they're wetter.

If you can post some pics of your roots we can get a better idea of what you're dealing with. If your aerial roots are white with colored growing tips, I'd say you're ok- they don't have to be green to be healthy. For my plants, I pour water on the aerial roots every time I water the plants, and that seems to do them just fine.

However, if your aerial roots are looking shriveled, lose their colored growing tips, are just dried up and don't turn green when wet, your environment may be too dry for them. I've had that happen before. It makes sense, because the roots were adapted to a certain moisture level (pretty high in a greenhouse), and then can't tolerate the drier conditions of a home in comparison. One solution is to raise the humidity of your growing environment, and it sounds like you've been trying to do just that. In my experience, dried up aerial roots do no harm to the plant (since they did not contribute a significant amount of water/nutrient uptake compared to the roots in the pot), and they're usually just replaced over time with more aerial roots that are better suited to the drier environment they're now growing in.

Good luck with your new plants!

-Hil

[kalanchoe]

Here are a couple examples of aerial roots, some with growing tips and some shriveled:

1- healthy phal aerial root
2- phal root that grew out of bottom of pot and shriveled
3- healthy den roots with green tips
4- den root whose tip dried up

While I prefer the look of the healthy roots with growing tips, I don't worry about the ones that shrivel up, mainly because there's not anything you can do about it once they shrivel! I've seen some shriveled roots grow new tips off the sides of the root, but that dried up tip will not grow back.