The Orchid Garden

Flower ID please, AKA How do orchids re-grow?

Question:

I swear this is going to sound ridiculous, but I had to ask somebody and I figured y’all would have the answer. I went to this Chinese restaurant, and they had this very elegant fuschia/purple flower in a bud vase, basically a stem with about five or six 1-inch flowers attached.  I’m assuming it’s an orchid of some type (my all-knowing friend with whom I enjoyed Chinese buffet told me this, so naturally my information is suspect).  So I took a cutting from the cutting, basically, and applied some rooting hormone and stuck it in a pile of dirt. Now I know some of you are already laughing at me, and you are the ones I hope respond….How do you regrow these things?  I’m assuming not from cuttings, so where are the seeds?  TIA

Response:

Check out rec.gardens.orchids. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I swear this is going to sound ridiculous, but I had to ask somebody and I figured y’all would have the answer. I went to this Chinese restaurant, and they had this very elegant fuschia/purple flower in a bud vase, basically a stem with about five or six 1-inch flowers attached.  I’m assuming it’s an orchid of some type (my all-knowing friend with whom I enjoyed Chinese buffet told me this, so naturally my information is suspect).  So I took a cutting from the cutting, basically, and applied some rooting hormone and stuck it in a pile of dirt. Now I know some of you are already laughing at me, and you are the ones I hope respond….How do you regrow these things?  I’m assuming not from cuttings, so where are the seeds?  TIA

– Elsie, Zone 8b, Texas A house without a cat is like a garden without flowers.

Response:

I’m assuming it’s an orchid of some type

check out rec. gardens orchids. they should know what it is and any  help you need  from there. kathy  z/5 life’s a  bowl of cherries, but the  ’ pits ‘ are hard to swallow !!! been there, done  that, had fun, whats next?

Response:

I swear this is going to sound ridiculous, but I had to ask somebody and I figured y’all would have the answer. I went to this Chinese restaurant, and they had this very elegant fuschia/purple flower in a bud vase, basically a stem with about five or six 1-inch flowers attached.  I’m assuming it’s an orchid of some type (my all-knowing friend with whom I enjoyed Chinese buffet told me this, so naturally my information is suspect).  So I took a cutting from the cutting, basically, and applied some rooting hormone and stuck it in a pile of dirt. Now I know some of you are already laughing at me, and you are the ones I hope respond….How do you regrow these things?  I’m assuming not from cuttings, so where are the seeds?  TIA

Hi, Not ridiculous at all! You just aren’t familiar with orchids. With a few exceptions, orchids that most people can get in the trade are epiphytes or lithophytes. That means that they either grow on rocks or cling to branches and the trunks of trees and shrubs (they aren’t parasites, they just live in the space and shelter provided by the environment of the branches). As such, putting them in soil is likely to not result in a good result. Instead they need to go into medium bark or some other coarse, free-draining material. Also, most orchids can only be propagated from divisions, or from seeds and tissue culture. Phalaenopsis and similar orchids (as well as some dendrobiums) occasionally make keikis (baby plants) at the nodes of flower stems (not unlike spider plants), but that too isn’t a "cutting" in the true sense. Bottom line, your "cutting" isn’t likely to work, sorry to say. Good luck. For more information (in addition to visiting rec.gardens.orchids) you may want to visit your local orchid society during their regular meetings. David Deutsch Gondwana Gardens http://www.gondwana.org

Response:

So I took a cutting from the cutting, basically, and applied some rooting hormone and stuck it in a pile of dirt.

It would help to know what kind of orchid the restaurant had. However, there are practically no orchids which can be grown from flower stem cuttings (or seeds) without special equipment & procedures. If you had the entire orchid plant, you might be able to divide it like an iris, depending on what kind it is. Iris, Zone 5a, Sunset Zone 40 "The trouble with people is not that they don’t know but that they know so much that ain’t so."  Josh Billings, 1818-1885.

Response:

Filed under: Phalaenopsis Orchid

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