| I think mounting is pretty much the same with any orchid. You find a good subtrate. Purchased cork is light, various relatively hard woods work well also. You kind of pick the support by the size you expect the plant to be and the weight you are able to support. The mount can be vertical, in which case you want some way to hang it. I pushed wire (18 gauge?) into a cork mount for a little Angraecum elephantinum, then I made a hook in the free end of the wire, which allows me to hang the mount vertically. I have a larger cork piece with a Rhyncholaelia digbyana that I've left horizontal, as a raft, to imitate pictures of this plant growing on horizontal branches in the wild. In any case, you can use some long-fiber sphagnum moss to wrap around the roots and then secure the plant to the mount with monofilament (many turnings to hold all the roots in place, but not too tight). After a while, the roots will attach to the mount and you can remove the monofilament, as I recently did with the Angraecum, which is now firmly gripping the cork with new roots. (It's an entertaining little plant. The bud for the new bloom spike forms a year before it blooms. It quietly sits in the axil for a year, then in a matter of weeks produces a single, heart-stopping white bloom. In the evening, when I'm walking home from work, I can pick up the fragrance from several houses down the block.) I spray these plants pretty much daily or twice a day, depending on the weather and dunk them periodically. The Angraecum will never get terribly large, so I'm not worried about having to change its mount. I got the Rhyncholaelia as a fairly small plant, so I assume that one day I'll need to lash the old mount to a new, larger one. - Bill  |