Telipogon advice

With the WOC21 now behind us, I have a bit more time now to try and sort out all the plants that have come home with me. I now realize that there are a whole lot of plants which I have no idea how to even start trying to grow. I have always admired Telipogons (from afar), but in a moment of weakness I ended up buying a few different species and now I am at a total loss on how to grow them. I suspect they won't grow with my paph collection, so suspect this is going to involve building some form of appropriate habitat. Any suggestions?

Trithor said:

With the WOC21 now behind us, I have a bit more time now to try and sort out all the plants that have come home with me. I now realize that there are a whole lot of plants which I have no idea how to even start trying to grow. I have always admired Telipogons (from afar), but in a moment of weakness I ended up buying a few different species and now I am at a total loss on how to grow them. I suspect they won't grow with my paph collection, so suspect this is going to involve building some form of appropriate habitat. Any suggestions?

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Telipogon are very difficult to import as they are so fragile, so not many hobbyists in the U.S. grow them. This brings back memories of one of the most talented orchid growers most of us ever encountered. There was a gentleman named Ron Griesbeck who was the undisputed wizard of Telipogon growing. He is no longer with us, but from what I can recall, he grew his plants on twigs in relatively high light conditions and intermediate temperatures trying never to exceed 75F/24C. Key components include good air movement, high humidity and pure water. I wish I could remember more - maybe someone else has something to add.

Naoki is having very good success from what he mentioned with his new Telipogons but he has STRICT temperature control with a low (45F?) I don't think he has had them very long.

Some are semi deciduous from what Thomas Mirenda had told me.

Which species to you manage to get?

Andicola, berthae, hutchinsonii, and thomasii.

sweet-hit up Naoki!

Do you have a cool spot with an ultrasonic fogger and a fan?

Nice, Gary. I just got 2 species this Spring, so not much experience as Chad mentioened. I got Telipogon collantesii and T. urceolatus from Peruflora over Redland May 2014. I wanted to try Fernandezia, and decided to try Telipogon as a side. I thought that they were going to die quickly. It wan't doing anything for 2 months, but it's now growing rapidly. Ironically, Fernandezia aren't going to make it...

The environment is highly controlled. Here is my current condition:

19C day 9C night
constant 80%RH
13 or 14 h light. The intensity of light (fluorescent light) is similar to what I use for Paphs and Phals (PPFD of 120 micro moles/m^2/s, the full sun at noon is about 2000 micro moles/m^2/s).
Automatic watering by MistKing twice a day (50 seconds each), the root dries before watering because not much sphag moss is used.
Fertilizer: I think it is Dyna-gro Grow (whatever was in the bottle with quite a bit of algae growing) at 160 microS/cm with Seaplex Kelp, about every other day.
Mounted on 3cm diameter Chokecherry branch with minimum sphag.

I noticed that there is a bud like structure for T. collantesii, and T. urceolatus started two new growths. So I think I got over the initial acclimation issue, but we'll see how long they will survive.

The other species growing well next to them are Masdevallia racemosa, M. rimarima-alba, Trichoceros antennifer.

I'd love to hear how yours will do!

Hi Gary,

A grower from Sacramento (I forget the name, Bob Gun?) told me that he managed to grow these types of high humidity/high light/low temp by planting them in small pots of oasis (the stuff sold in SA for flower arranging). I tried this once with Restrepia and the like and they survived the summer in these tiny water-pots. He stood the "pots" in water so there was constant evaporative cooling. I suppose you can give this a try.

naoki said:

Ironically, Fernandezia aren't going to make it...

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That's a surprise because they require cool temps!!

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I have no experience in growing any cool species, so this is going to be a whole new learning experience for me. I am almost exclusively a paph grower with a bit of 'flowering shade cloth' thrown in. I was thinking of building a Wardian case or similar to house some species. I have an 'alcove' measuring about 2,5m wide, x 2,2m high x 0,8m deep. It is currently occupied by a wall unit, but I am sure a plant display will give me infinitely more pleasure.
I am thinking of building a storage unit underneath to house pumps, timers and reservoirs. Then a shallow water/swamp habitat for some fish and amphibians and then the remainder for the telipogons and other (soon to be purchased). Funny how a USD200 purchase snowballs into a project far out of proportion to the initial purchase.
Naoki, a few pics of how you are growing these will be greatly appreciated.
Any suggestions on how I should approach this new 'folly' will also be of great assistance. Eric, I am sure that if you can grow plants on the stove, I should be able to grow some in a case, if only I can figure out what I need to do to build it.

Wow!!!! Actually I used a 55 gallon diamond cut cube fish tank. unfortunately I did not leave an air space (I recommend 2" gap between the tank and cover). I had water circulating pumps, fans, ultrasonic foggers and stewed a large number of Pleuros to death!!! :sob:

Gary, here is mine (I don't know if it helps, though):


(oops, I noticed the color balance is quite a bit off).

If you need quite a bit of cooling (I think your place is pretty warm/hot), did you consider a modded refrigerator? If you use something like HygroTherm, you can control the night and day temp/humidity. You can use household ultrasonic humidifier connected to HygroTherm. LED is probably better bet because you can mount it inside. The efficiency of LED increases with lower temp (unlike fluorescent light).

I'm guessing that a modern fridge is more energy efficient than cooling with aquarium water cooler + heat exchanger.

If you want to make a custom enclosure, some people attach a portable AC unit (Karma has a nice setup).

If you have cold well water, it might be a good source of cooling, but it could be quite a bit tricky.

To make a custom enclosure, plywood may be a cheap/easy way. There are quite a few plywood aquarium web sites (they use epoxy to make it waterproof). But elastomeric paint used for roofing seems to work pretty well (easier and cheaper). I have a couple water-catch trays made with plywood+ elastomeric paint, and they are holding up pretty well. Or maybe something like Ray's enclosure made from rigid foam insulation. Insulation will definitely help to lower running cost.

Knowing that you jump in deeply (e.g. flasking lab), I'll not be surprised that Percival Environmental Chamber is installed in your place next week! oke:

High humidity and highest only intermediate temps, gentle but complete air movement (think constantly moving low clouds)

Naoki-are those what is left of the Fernandezia's above the Telipogons?

Saddly, yes, one of them (left) initiated a leaf bud after dropping leaves, but it didn't continue to grow. The middle one grew 1-2mm root, but the growth stopped, and no sign of recovering from dehydration. Right one didn't do anything other than gradually dropping leaves. I'll probably try again next year. You have some success with Fernandezia, right? Maybe, I wasn't watering enough in the beginning (I sprayed once a day before I set up MistKing), or the temp was too low (there was some screw up in the temp setting initially).

Gary, if you check out https://www.orchidsforum.com, there are some interesting info from European growers who have success with Telipogon.

You have some success with Fernandezia, right?

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I have not killed one yet so I guess so. They will definitely do better when my overall temps go down.

Thanks guys, lots of info here. I will need a bit of time to digest it all and plan my project.
(Flasking lab is working well now, so I hope that with a bit of application that this will meet with the same success. I now have a whole range of paph species and hybrids germinating. I am not sure what I am going to do when they get to the deflasking stage, fortunately that is some months off still)