Life expectancy of phals/dens

[E-Jag]

A recent thread ny Anton regarding his dockrillia aroused my curiosity. His plant is around 30 years old! To my uninformed self, that's astounding. What is the average life expectancy of phals and dens, roughly? I would imagine that at some point they'll get gray and wrinkled and then keel over.

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E-Jag

[Sharyn]

YOU MEAN LIKE US?

[jerrymeola]

Orchids are constantly growing and discarding old growth. So you can say it is capable of living forever or that the life expectancy of each growth is only a few years.

Then we can also propagate by division, so how does that count.

[E-Jag]

Pretty much like that, Sharyn. I know my blooms sure aren't what they used to be.

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E-Jag

[E-Jag]

Jerry - So, assuming that they remain properly cared for and insect and disease free, we might expect a phal/den to live for decades - or at least some form of them (new growth replacing the old ).

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E-Jag

[agarrat]

With proper care and plant repotting you den will live foreverrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[Kevin Western]

Hi,
Given that this type of orchid continuously makes new growths and aborts the old senescent ones in theory, unless they are killed off by some misshap, they could be maintained forever.
Kevin

[grumpysan]

The plant as a whole is theoretically immortal, as it produces new growth every year and drops off older growth. There are specimens in the Kew botanical gardens that have been cultivated for over 100 years, apparently.

[E-Jag]

Your replies are appreciated. Don't know why I find this so interesting but given that, before I joined this forum, I could practically hear my orchids chanting "yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..."
this probably isn't good news for the plants. Especially if my wife survives me - she's the Darth Vader of greenery.

Rick

[janet_a]

there was an article in either the aos mag or the orchid digest about catts; the author talked about one of his plants, which had bloomed reliably for fifty (50) years.

[kmarch]

At orchid club this week we saw video footage of Dendrobium speciosum in situ . Some of the patches of plants were nearly as large as my living room (although I have a small flat, they were large patches nonetheless). It probably took 50 years for these patches to grow this large.

[Anton]

Speaking of the ol' fella, here he is after remounting onto his new retirement branch, first time in 30 odd years.

The cym, also grown by dad, and according to mum, is also around 30+ years old as well.

So, age shall not weary them.

[Cynthia, Prescott, AZ]

Well, potentially forever. But it is interesting to note that all the fabulous plants that were collected from the wilds in the 1800's are now gone, lost forever to the gene pool of orchids. Man has not been too good at keeping the plants desease free and in good culture, mostly, I suspect, from ignorance of the deseases and proper culture that existed back in those days. Many hybrids exist today that can't be remade because the originating parents, or parents of parents, don't exist any more. The crosses can be made using the correct species, but the results won't be as good, because the particular fine clones used in the original cross are gone. A very good example of this is Cattleya dowiana aurea. There is very little variation in the plants now available, but we have drawing of many varrieties that that existed in the 1800's that we would love to have today, but will never see again unless there are a lot of mutations (probably over centuries) to get that kind of diversity.