I bought a white-flowering phalaenopsis with two flower spikes before Christmas. When the seed pods matured and dried I sprinkled some of the seeds in the woody compost. A few months later lots of seedlings grew so I re-potted four or five of them. What has grown does not resemble the parent plant at all. The new plants are around 20cms tall, very spindly, have lots of soft narrow leaves and one or two small pink flowers are appearing, though haven't opened yet. Are they worth keeping as they are not particularly attractive plants?
If you actually are growing baby orchids, and that is a very big IF, you are very lucky. When the orchid seeds mature in nature they fly off with the wind. It is necessary they land in a substance in the rain forest which is a natural form of gelatinous sugar. Commercial orchid growers prepare a special substance to simulate this natural substance. That material sustains those tiny seeds for a very long time, up to several years. It can take a long time for the new seedlings to begin to grow to any size. In the artificial world of orchid growing, those would normally be grown inside an old style milk bottle laying on its side and sealed. It is sealed to protect the seedlings until they can begin to develop fully. In nature they would eventually attach themselves to the tree where they landed. But very few survive. That is why nature provides millions of seeds. The total time for the new plant to mature is approximately 7 years from seed to first spike. Most good orchid books explain this entire process in detail. But it is very complicated and it would be a rare event if you were fortunate enough to have made it work in the method you described. I suggest you try to find some material to read on how orchids reproduce naturally. But be prepared. The time to read and digest all of this can be lengthy. By the way, there is a short cut that many commercial growers now use and that is through tissue culture, commonly called TC. A piece of leaf is taken and cultured in a lab thus producing new baby plants. That can cut quite a bit of time off the growing of a new bloom, several years. But it is even more complicated than nature's method and requires some very sterile conditions. There are articles on the net on how TC works as well. I found one descent article on the net you may want to read. It is entitled "Growing Orchids from Seed. Are you sure you want to do this? You can read it here: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/orchid_gardening/71920
My problem is that I don't know what baby phalaenopsis orchids are supposed to look like - certainly not what has grown, but will keep an eye on them. I will be extremely embarassed if they do in fact turn out to be baby Ps because I literally sprinkled them onto the top of the compost, tapped it down and gave the whole plant some water. It was several weeks afterwards that all these seedlings began to appear (dozens and dozens of them). I did only plant out a few into general purpose compost and they have been there for about two months in the kitchen window. This is my first foray into keeping orchids. I have always been fascinated with them and when I eventually win the Lottery (no harm in dreaming), I will take a trip to the rainforests to see them growing in the wild. Thank you for your reply. I will search the internet to try and glean a little more information. Kind regards, AG
I just completely read the link I gave you. If you read it, you will find they say 3 years to get a bloom from a new seed. I'm unsure where they documented their information. But that is not truly important, the basics are correct. I have a fairly large library of orchid books and most of the articles and texts I've read indicate an average of 7 years. Still, waiting 3 is a long time! I once got the "bug" to try to grow these myself from start to finish. I didn't want to mess with the seeds so I began to buy the milk jugs filled with baby plants. After about two years of trying to transfer them to pots and still waiting on them to grow, I finally said "Enough"! I went back to buying plants that were already large enough to bloom. But even that can be frustratingly long! I decided two summers ago to buy 100 "blooming size" orchids from a grower in Hawaii. When they arrived, they were all nice sized plants. I thought I was getting a good deal at $4 per plant. Finally, after two years of waiting, they have only recently begun to bloom! And I grow them in a "tropical" atrium designed for this purpose! I no longer complain about the price a good orchid grower asks for their plants. Those guys wait a LONG time to grow something large enough to sell. From here on in, I'll buy them in spike thank you! Well, maybe not always.
Baby phalaenopsis look like adult phalaenopsis, even when very small. If your seedlings don't have any resemblance to the parent, it must be something else. A photo would really help confirm this though?
Thanks for that. I would really like to know what has grown as the seedlings do not resemble the adult plant at all. When the flowers appear fully I will take a photograph and pursue identification. It is a real mystery, I can tell you.
Take a photo now, there should be enough distingushing features to at least let you know what its not (& maybe even what it is).
