Brassia advice

[armando81603]

Hi Everyone

Im looking for a little advice. I have had a brassia for about eight months. When I first recieved the plant it was in flower and it had 3 s bulbs. After about a month the s bulbs started to wrinkle. At the time I did not know how to properly care for an orchid other than to water once a week. I now no a bit more about growing but despite all my efforts I cant get my s bulbs to plump up. I keep my plant in a south facing window covered with a sheer curtain, I water once a week and fertilize 3 out of for times with a diluted solution. I also spray the plant with water in the early morning. My plant now has three new shoots growing, one is almost developed into a s bulb and none of those are wrinkled. Is there anything else I can do????

One other question. Do brassia flower from the youngest growth or from the more mature??? Also, will my shriveled s bulbs effect if my plant flowers or not???

Thanks so much.

Armando

[mayres]

Armando - the flower spikes will come out of the NEW growth each time the plant puts them out. It is the job of the old part of the plant to support and give energy to the new. I have seen a lot of varying responses to the wrinkled pseudobulb issue. From what I can tell, bottom line is don't get overly excited about it if the rest of the plant is doing OK. Some plants appear to do this naturally regardless. I think to some degree it is the environment that you have them in and there is not much you can do about it through watering. Those with a greenhouse and lots of humidity, I'm guessing, might see less wrinkling than those of us less fortunate that have to do the best we can with home environments. I have not seen any correlation between slightly shriveled pseudobulbs and good healthy flowers. Of course significantly/major shriveled ones could be revealing a host of potential growing issues/problems, but I'm assuming from your comments and the fact that the rest of the plant appears OK that this is not what we are talking about.

[Cynthia, Prescott, AZ]

I would not worry about old pseudobulbs being wrinkled. It is common for older bulbs to wrinkle in less than very high humidity. It is just a balance between water intake and water loss, which is a little higher in a home than in a greenhouse. I was quite shocked to see the bulbs on my Laelias, grown outdoors for some time in Calif, rapidly swell up when first put into my new greenhouse. If the plant is growing well, don't worry about it.

I believe most orchids of the Oncidium alliance send up bloom spikes from the base of the new growth, from inside the sheathing leaves as the new growth is getting close to full size. Some times this occurs just a little later when that just matured growth is just starting another new growth, but that would be a situation where growths are coming one after another pretty fast.