Mid-November Update on My Orchid Collection

I have some new developments to write about since my last post about the nice surprise I woke up to almost a month ago. Since then, all of the buds on that Oncidium have opened up, and the plant has a lovely spray of lightly fragranced blooms:

Oncidium in full bloom

The Oncidium Twinkle Fragrance Fantasy that I bought while in Southern California is still developing its spikes…painstakingly slowly. This one’s like watching paint dry—but when it finally blooms, it’ll be sooooo worth it! Take a look at the length of the spikes on this plant when I brought it home almost two months ago, and then compare how long its spikes are now:

Some spikes are almost twice as long now!

In more exciting news, I have two Phals in spike! One of them is the keiki grown off of the other Phal that’s in spike. I removed it from the mother plant a couple months ago and potted it on its own, because it had a really nice long root system. So basically, Mother and Daughter will presumably bloom around the same time. Very very excited about these:

This Momma Phal’s spike snuck up on me. I didn’t notice it until it was already this long!
Keiki spike…just a little nubbin at this point.

I mentioned a while ago that one of my Phals had begun to grow a basal keiki. Well, I now have two Phals with basal keikis. Both of these Phals have been ailing for awhile, so I think they’re trying to reproduce and keep their “bloodlines” going. If you’ve ever wondered what a basal keiki looks like, here’s a shot:

Basal keiki

I’ve moved the plant in the above photo to a less bright location; you can tell that it’s been getting too much light because of the reddish-purple tinge around the edges of the leaves. A shadier locale should help.

I’d also like to mention that here in Park Slope, we were VERY lucky during Hurricane Sandy. I fully expected to lose power and possibly water, but we didn’t. We experienced no flooding, and had no damage to the apartment whatsoever. Like I said…very, very lucky. I’ve made a couple donations to Hurricane Sandy relief funds, and f you’d like to help I’d recommend donating to the Red Cross and/or to KittyKind. I volunteer with KK once a week, and they do great work finding good homes for cats. You can read about why KK needs Sandy relief funds by clicking here.

Well, that’s it for the time being. Some fun developments over here in Brooklyn Orchids Land!

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