Hi,
I,m back after a minor cyber-melt down.
I want to answer the oldest question first, I hope. Do calypso grow out of soil and in pure humus? Yes, I believe that before the forests were regarded as managed large scale resouce extractions it was a different world than what we got today. The old giant trees had great aerial debris collections caught up in the tangled old branches. There are many types of plants and ferns and vines not to mention fungi and mosses that grow up in the trees where the buildup has been deep and rotted into soil, humus.
I believe calypso has not always been forced to dwell on the forest floor. In places where an old wire fence ran through a wooded hillside the forest duff had piled up against the wire almost a foot deep. When I tore out the old wire I had to move the calypsos growing in it. Those roots reached down to the soil below and may have been the mycellium and not the actual roots. Nothing appeared to penetrate the underlying soil although there was contact.
Prisana, my first response to that question, can I grow Calypso in Florida, is, no. But then again if you went and built a terrerium with a transplanted miniature forest and kept it air conditioned to keep the soil temps below 61.5 degrees, and the ph at 6, you might pull it off. Of course you would start with Calypso seed for this project and not go dig up any mature plants, right?
As far as Calypso in Arizona I would imagine the coniferous forests are all at pretty good altitudes so it may be true that they are to be found at 8000 feet. I have links on my website which give great reliable information on all the Calypso habitats, types of forests, maps, photos, good stuff for the serious Calypso fan.
Is it ok for me to list links now?....what the heck, here goes,
http://calypsoorchid.com
from there is a link to my blog that is a running diary of my trials and tribulations with Calypso.
Thanks for making me feel so welcome! Calypsogrower