Garden Maintenance

I’ve been working up the courage to try my hand at growing orchids. Their plant anatomy and care process is so interesting–I think that’s what draws me to them. They’re a challenge.

A couple weeks ago, I came across Blue Ridge Exotics. They carry a selection of carnivorous plants, orchids, bromeliads and unusual houseplants.

They had this Howeara (now Leomesezia [Lsz.]) Lava Burst ‘Puanani’ that was petite and produced a spray of red flowers when in spike. It was being sold as is so after doing some research on its care, I decided to give it a try.

Up until this point, I was only familiar with the structure of monopodial orchids like phalaenopsis. I’ve never actually seen a sympodial orchid in person so this one was a bit jarring. Sympodial orchids actually grow sideways. See the diagram below from the American Orchid Society.

Sympodial orchids have a “back” and a “front,” from which new growth emerges. You can identify the back by finding the pseudobulb with the most wrinkles, sometimes it even doesn’t have leaves or roots.

I know I needed to learn more about my Lava Burst orchid, how to optimize its growth, and how to care for it. But first, I needed to know how my orchid was doing now.

Assessing My Lava Burst Orchid

I sought to learn more about what a well-performing Lava Burst looked like. There were tons of videos out there for other orchid species like phals, cattleyas, and vandas. The Howeara Lava Burst orchid is an intergeneric species that is pretty much like an oncidium. Well at least all my searching points me toward oncidiinae when learning about Lava Burst’s care. However, I could only find two or three videos specifically of Lava Burst.

When I received it, it was well packaged, but potted in a small 2″ nursery pot. I removed it from the medium to ascertain its health. It was a slightly pale green, probably from the stress of shipping, and the roots were a bit of a tangle. Some did not look alive, but some did (albeit short and fairly new), and there was certainly some new growth happening at the front of the orchid. At the time I didn’t have any supplies to be able to repot it immediately, so I just placed it back in its container and continued to research.

Bark, Then Spagnum; Not Spagnum, Then Bark

In my research I came across one user on YouTube who just repotted her Lava Burst too so I reached out to her for some advice.

Even though in her video, she went with a sphagnum layer at the bottom and bark medium on top, she observed that it didn’t like that configuration. Later she ended up flipping the medium so that the sphagnum was on top and the bark layer was just underneath it. She said it seemed to like this configuration more because the sphagnum layer at top encouraged roots from the new growth. This is something I was certainly interested in since I had already determined that the root system on mine was lacking.

The medium I ordered finally arrived. I decided on the Oncidium and Seedling Imperial mix from repotme.com since Lava Burst was an oncidium-type. I also picked up some sphagnum moss from my local nursery. Now I was ready to repot.

Pruning

Pruning a plant is always an intimidating task and somehow it increases tenfold with orchids. Personally I think it’s because their anatomy is just so weird. But if you think about it, the basic principles of pruning plants like roses and other houseplants can also apply to orchids with a little bit of knowledge.

When pruning, you always want to have a goal. It can be to improve the appearance of the plant, maybe to improve the growth of the plant. With my Howeara Lava Burst it was a little bit of both. It had one or two pseudobulbs that were not really serving the entire plant. One of them didn’t have any leaves or live roots, the other had a wimpy leaf, no live roots, and no sign of a flower spike. The former had to go for sure, and I was still debating the latter because although it didn’t have roots for nutrient uptake, it did have a leaf that would be able to photosynthesize.

I also needed to give the roots a haircut. It had a lot of dead roots that weren’t serving the plant either, most were attached to the pseudobulbs that I wanted to remove. In the end, I removed both the pseudobulbs I mentioned.

I probably could’ve kept the one with the leaf at least. After all, the leaf does still photosynthesize and would provide energy for the other bulbs. But I suppose that’s part of the hobby–taking risks and waiting for the outcome. That left 3 viable pseudobulbs with healthy roots to support the new growth that was emerging.

Since taking these photos, I can already see a difference in color on the leaves and more roots showing on some of the pseudobulbs. I hope that’s a promising sign.

Resources

Caring for Your Howeara Orchids (https://www.first-nature.com/flowers/~howeara.php)

Orchid Board: Hwra. Puanani ‘Lava Burst’ Care? (http://www.orchidboard.com/community/beginner-discussion/14936-hwra-puanani-lava-burst-care.html)