Today and Monday.

And then I am finished with this office. My poor office orchid, which was so happy in my previous location where it got plenty of light, is now losing all of its flower buds due to the new location (the dungeon!).
All three of the office orchids will come home on Monday when STM will let me have the car for the day :)

Sigh

I miscounted.

After Today, I have 15 days more of being in this office.
23 Calendar Days until my last day.

I'm going to have to take my office orchids home much sooner, though. With this awful new cubicle I'm now occupying they only have office lighting, no natural light.

I'm trying though - I printed out a number of photographs and pictures to try to brighten things up...and distract people walking by so they look at the pictures, not me.

I'm not an exhibit in the zoo, people.

Orchid Care

So, as you may (or may not...I don't know how closely anyone other than myself actually looks at my blog...) have noticed, the picture of the orchid on the top right over there has had some changes to the notes on it. I thought, in retrospect, that it may be nice to explain a bit for those who may have no f-ing clue what I mean by some of those terms. Orchids are an obsession, often leading one to learn Latin and certain Asian words and such...but I digress.

The orchid pictured on the right here is a Phalaenopsis type orchid. They have a low profile and wide, flat leaves and very thick roots which often perform photosynthesis. This is quite helpful to the plant, and is also rather unusual in the plant world. It normally (if it weren't a greenhouse-bred fancy hybrid) would have found itself a nice spot on the upper section of a tree somewhere in Southeast Asia. This particular orchid was purchased in flower at the King of Prussia Orchid Show in February 2006.

About two months ago it developed crown rot. This is an infection of the plant by which water remaining in the crown (the bit where all the leaves join together) carried an organism which caused the plant to die from the center out. I have never heard of a plant being rescued from this. ALL the leaves died, and we were left with only a group of very healthy roots.

STM decided, as an experiment, to see what would happen if we just kept watering it. Since one orchid more or less in the bathtub doesn't really make that much difference when you have about 40 of them (I told you it was an obsession!) I didn't mind. Also, since it was most likely me that caused the crown rot (orchids usually only get it when there is too much water on them, especially late in the day or at night. The organism that causes it is most active at night. This is why responsible orchid growers will usually water in the morning, to allow the plant's upper bits to dry completely before nightfall.) I felt a bit guilty.

About a week and a half ago we were spritzing the orchids, which we do almost every morning, when I noticed a new growth on the roots (!!). I immediately called STM over to see, and we both could tell it was growing a keiki!!!! A keiki is a baby orchid which normally grows from a fully mature orchid which, for reasons of it's own, chooses to reproduce by cloning rather than through seeds. Phals have this tendency, but I've never seen one keiki off of the roots. I have another keiki which grew off of another plant in the usual way - the plant put out a flower spike with no buds and then the baby grew at the end.

So now we have a new baby orchid, but one with an adult, mature root system. This is a major advantage, since many keikis die from lack of water when they have an immature root system (once they are detached from the parent plant)

I'm really interested to see where this goes next. And by now you are probably thoroughly sick of orchid talk.

Office Orchid Update!

So, in a move akin to my sister's updates on her varied and sundry knitting projects, an update to the office orchid situation I mentioned last month.

The two orchids I rescued from possible death have both survived, and are actually well on the road to recovery. One of them has several visible, healthy new roots. The other, the one whose root decay was much worse, has become visibly healthier. This points to root growth in the medium where I can't see it.

My third office orchid, the Kalapana, has new growth but is kind of in a stall. I don't think the office has the right sort of atmosphere for them to truly thrive. My orchids at home get a similar amount of attention and care--in fact I spend more time with my office orchids--but the office ones don't grow as quickly and haven't shown any indications of future infloresence.

I have experienced dramatic improvement in health and happiness of other plants when I have taken them out of my office and into my apartment in the past, that may be the solution here, too.

In short, my office has too many stressed out people for plants to be happy. Poor vibrations and bad karma, apparently.

Orchid Update!

A while back I posted about the orchids I rescued from my office, both of which were kind of on their last legs.

I am happy to report that one of the two is now growing 5 healthy new roots and the other, while being a bit more shy in the root department, is growing a new leaf-which means that both of them should survive! Luckily I have an office with a window, so they do get a dosage of sunlight each day. If I were in an inner office I would have to have some sort of plant light for the fellas.

I'm looking forward to a few months down the line when they flower again!

Orchids

So, in the office where I work, they brought two phalaenopsis plants to sit at the front desks of each floor (we occupy two floors of the building) about a month or so ago. At this point both of these poor fellows are living in my office struggling to survive the terrible medium they were forced to live in. One had a single healthy root with no signs of new growth, the other is in slightly better shape with one root that had partially survived, a couple of stumps of root that are still hanging on, and three little bumps that will grow into new roots given time. I've repotted both with new medium, mostly sphagnum moss with a little bark and sponge rock mixed in, and put the one that's in worse shape in a plastic bag with the top open for air circulation. I haven't decided yet whether I'll allow them to go back into the office if they survive or to officially adopt them :D For now they will keep the oncidium I brought into my office back in December company.