Early Birthday Present :D

Yesterday I received an early birthday present from my lovely girlfriend - 4 lovely miniature orchids from Inhle Orchids, which were already unpacked by the time I was told to come home and look at my present. Apparently, the plants were wrapped in bubble wrap and placed inside a box; they seem to have come through fairly well. Interestingly, Inhle shipped them before even being paid - very unusual in South Africa! All are new genera to the OOAB collection. Yay diversity! So, without further ado:

Bulbophyllum laxiflorum
IOSPE

Bulbophyllum purpurascens
IOSPE

Pleurothallis palliolata
IOSPE

Restrepia trichoglossa
IOSPE

Can hardly wait for them all to get around to flowering!

The first two (as you can clearly see!) came mounted on little bark chunks, whilst the two Pleurothallid Alliance plants had sphagnum moss around their roots; I kept that intact and packed some more moss around the roots.

Sadly, it looks like my big bucket 'o moss (a 5l water jug with the top hacked off) has attracted what I think are fungus gnats (arghh!). The little swines are all over the place. Will have to do something about them, as I have an aversion to small insects flying around my collection! Bacillus thuringiensis ssp. israelensis is apparently a good biological control. Of course, getting hold of such things around here is an epic pain. I have yet to find a supplier of any biological controls in .za (at least, any that respond to my email).

Pests: Black Fly

This morning whilst doing our watering we noticed a few black bugs crawling over the pseudobulbs on our Oncidium sphacelatum. Turns out "A Few" was actually Hundreds when we looked up at the racemes. Almost every flower has like 20-50 little black aphid type creatures clustered around it, merrily sucking away. No wonder the flowers were starting to look sad :/

Black Fly Of Doom

Lots of Doom

Not just behind, but in and on the flowers.
And look at those shed exoskeletons. :/

Extreme closeup (crop)

 The Oncidium was then immediately relegated to the bathroom (quarantine and spraying area), had the worst affected (and mostly dead) racemes trimmed off (tragic!), and was then sprayed with Dursban (Chlorpyrifos) 1ml/l with 1ml/l of Bladbuff wetting agent. Made sure some got into the crowns between the leaves, just in case...

I really, really would like a lot of lady bugs and whatever eats/parasitises whitefly and red spider mite...

So, if your flowers look sad, don't assume they're done flowering... have a closer look :/
We'll be keeping a close eye on the rest of our plants for the next couple of weeks.

The photographic models got flushed down the toilet, and the other racemes were tossed in a plastic bag and immediately removed from the OOAB premises... Argh.

Disa Rot

Apparently the biggest problem with growing Disas is their susceptibility to fungi. How the little blighters ever manage to grow in the wild is a mystery!

One of the Disas we bought at La Motte was stricken with "Disa rot" whilst in our care, where some bacterium or (more commonly) fungus starts chomping away at the roots. Underground. Where you can't see it. The next thing you know, the leaves start turning yellow. We tried two doses of Efekto's Fungi Nil 500 WP (500g/kg Captab [Dicarboximide]) at 4g/l, but the plant looked more and more sad.

Last night, after potting up some flasked, micropropagated Disa bivalvata, I decided to have a look at the orchid underground and see how things were getting on.

I was dismayed to see just how far the rot had gone; pretty much all the above ground plants had rotted clean through where they join up to the roots/tubers - the flowering stem pretty much fell right off when I removed the plant from its pot. I managed to find one tiny shoot and tuber (with no intact roots) that looked like it might make it; everything else was blackened and had rotted right through. :(

Disa Rot: The surface signs

Disa Rot: Noooooo! My Plants!!!! :( You can see the tubers and the shoots and how it rots right through the middle.

Disa Rot: Up close and personal. Yuck!

Sad looking flowers; you'll note that the seed pod was swelling, so our efforts at pollination had worked. :(

All that remains... (the background is kitchen towel, so you can see just how small this was)

After leaving the tiny little plantlet soaking in fungicide for a while, I repotted it into fresh Disa potting mix and watered it with 4g/l Fungi Nil. Hopefully it will make it, but I don't hold out much hope :( Most Disa growers seem to recommend regular "preventative" anti-fungal treatments - looks like they're definitely needed...