about ghosts

[Gene.Staley]

are the orchids just plain hard to keep alive? cuz I heard it was just hard to get them to germinate, I don't understand if they are only hard to germinate then why are they so rare? all orchids are hard to germinate.

[solay]

I believe it also because of the culture requirements. They like it very humid and little air movement from what I understand.

[digitalgate]

they are not hard to garminate, they are hard to mimic their natural environment.

[patticake]

Keeping them alive is tricky. One of the few that I've killed...

[jay]

This is a great site to give you a ton of information about Dendrophylax lindenii.

GhostOrchid.info

It has pictures in the wild, including the first ever video of pollination, and pictures of his own personal collection. Very informative site.

[prem]

they are not at all difficult to grow in flask...getting them to survive from deflasking to adulthood is trickier, but not impossible.

BTW, I noticed one thing when I made a foray into the swamps to see live ghosts...the growing center of the plants actually grows TOWARD the tree with new roots emerging from beneath older roots...we typically want to mount them with the growth center away from the mount. This may explain the curious habit of cultivated seedlings for their roots to curl into the air rather than toward the mount...they are actually growing in a pre-programmed direction, expecting to encounter the substrate and latch on...instead, they are met with air. One of the keys to growing this species well is to make the roots happy...roots in air are much harder to keep moist than roots attached to a mount.

Just a thought.


---Prem

[Gene.Staley]

ok thanks all...

[lmartiny]

Originally Posted by solay

They like it very humid and little air movement from what I understand.

Sounds like Florida to me.

[dtje2000]

I have killed two. The first one, ok, I'm not so surprised...it was a seedling, yet unestabished on it's twig.

The second one, darn it, I thought I would have a better shot. This grower left it flasked longer, thus it was larger when he tied it to it's twig. I put the thing over my little bog garden, and as lmartiny will attest, it's been PLENTY wet down here these last couple of months. As well, the bog garden is on my screen-enclosed patio which boosts the humidity even more. I had high hopes for this one...alas, it failed to thrive as well.

I won't give up, but for now I'll have to let it go. For kicks, I'm attaching my little bog garden and a photo of when the thing was still living (aka struggling to live). You can see the small piece of wood with a few green roots on it hanging from the little ficus branch...the other orchid, on the lava rock, is a Den. aggregatum that I've instructed to BE a lithophyte. :P