Advice needed for wrinkly dendrobium nobile (noID)

[rbarata]

Usually I water my den every 2 weeks in winter (more or less). It gives 2 times a month, 24 times a year.
Its almost nothing but it's not zero.

[flowerpower]

Do the canes wrinkle a lot when the plant is resting in winter?

I repotted my wrinkly dendrobium again into a more moisture retentive orchid mix and perlite, but it did not change the shrivelling (nor did it worsen). I am just accepting that it is is how it wants to be.

I also bought another dendrobium nobile that lost its blooms. I paid £2 which is something like $3 USD. I had seen this dendrobium nobile on the shelf for several weeks and was waiting for the price to drop. Eventually it got overlooked during their discounts so I took it to customer services and requested a discount as it was now so dry that some of the leaves were dropping from dehydration. I'm glad I did because its roots were amazing. So good I had to go to a larger pot because it was definitely not going to fit back into the smaller one. It had a new cane half complete and I thought its purple blooms would look great with my white one next year.

But this dendrobium still had plump canes and I'm certain did not get water for weeks, which is what I just don't understand about why mine shrivelled in spite of plentiful water (with decent roots) and sunlight. The only thing I can think is that the first mix was so dry it somehow pulled water out of the plant...

[estación seca]

Older pseudobulbs on this kind of Dendrobium always shrivel as they age, just like us. There is nothing to be done about it. If you keep insisting on new ones without wrinkles the ones you pass up get very testy.

[flowerpower]

It is not like an ageing pseudobulb, it wrinkled rapidly when repotted into a fairly dry bark/CHC mix (but was frequently watered in this dry mix). My Phals roots went wild in this mix but I think it was an issue for the dendrobium.

Both dendrobiums are now in a more moisture retentive mix - commercial mix of bark and peat moss. I really am not keen on peat moss for orchids so I added a ton of perlite to open it up. I have to just use what I have available to me.

A lot of people have emphasised using coarse mixes for dendrobiums hence my use of a dryer bark mix the first time, so I will have to wait and see how the roots are in my finer orchid mix next year.

[Roberta]

There are several types of orchids for which I don' t cut off p-bulbs until they are certifiably dead (brown and flopping over) Lots of Dendrobiums, Epidendrums... I have had the experience of cutting what I thought was a dead p-bulb (or even stem) and having the oh-!@%# reaction when I found that it was actually alive. Out of bloom may be ugly, but the flowers make up for it.