About fertilysers for Slipper orchids.

[gonewild]

I think the adaptation of leaf structure to funnel water and nutrients to the center of the plant into a favorable drip zone is a super nifty thought. Makes sense functionally, but would be hard to test phylogenetically. Some orchids do "trash basket" their roots by sending them upwards (many Catasetums do this) to catch falling leaves etc which decompose to provide nutrients, no reason the leaves wouldn't serve a similar function... Shoot, plants in the yard seem to catch falling leaves and smaller acorns from the live oaks in the crown. Dang, we need another grad student to look at this...

Do you have any extra slow release acorns?
Hmmm....wait maybe the acorn is there to eat the plant?

I think actually the roots of plants like the Catasetums that grow upwards are actualy doing so for support rather than seeking nutrients. The plants can get more nutrients from bird poop than falling leaves.

And since a plants leaves are a better net for falling bird poop than it's roots are that sould put a point on the side of foliar feeding.

 

[Ernie]

Do you have any extra slow release acorns?
Hmmm....wait maybe the acorn is there to eat the plant?

I think actually the roots of plants like the Catasetums that grow upwards are actualy doing so for support rather than seeking nutrients. The plants can get more nutrients from bird poop than falling leaves.

And since a plants leaves are a better net for falling bird poop than it's roots are that sould put a point on the side of foliar feeding.

RE catasetums- i remember, while researching for a judging project, coming across a picture of a massive Catasetum in the jungle and it was obvious it was trash basketing. The root system was huge and full of all kinds of things. If it was in the US, it woulda had Coke cans, Big Mac wrappers, and cigarette butts in it. Roots radiated out in all directions and the plant might have been at the top of a stump??? I'll have to try to track it down, but it might have been in a book (gasp!) that I don't own. Anyway, I saw some home-grown hybrids doing that down here at the Lakeland show this September too.

As far as where crowns aim in wild plants, I'm sure one would find a broad range depending on species and where it is growing. Too many to generalize. No reason we can't use funneling to our advantage though. On the converse, I've had massive plants suddenly go downhill later to discover a massive root system perfectly dry because all the leaves were carrying water away from the pot and too much media being covered by leaves.

Anyway, I think we agree.

 

[Rick]

I'm curious as to how many of us growers water/feed there plants strictly by adding water to the pots or root zone reservoirs (as for hydro or Semi hydroponic systems) without getting any water on the leaves. If you are misting foliage, then are you using purified/RO water? Because there are nutrients of concern in all non purified surface waters, and we still wouldn't have a controled experiment of foot vs leaf uptake of nutrients.

Most growers, including myself (at least in GH's) tend to just spray the whole world, and realy couldn't define foliar only feeding regimes. But unless you have your whole collection in a single source watering trough, it would take way too long to carefully water individual pots without getting leaves wet.

So unless I'm not doing true foliar feeding by flipping plants upside down to get the bottoms of leaves wet, then who will ever know whether its the stuff going in through the leaves or through the roots?

I've seen some great plants grown SH, but I have not seen a unversal success to SH grown plants, and the FCC's are dominated by "traditional" splash fed/watered plants. So its apparent that feeding isn't the whole story, and there seems to be too many differences between species to generalize for perfection.

 

[gonewild]

RE catasetums- i remember, while researching for a judging project, coming across a picture of a massive Catasetum in the jungle and it was obvious it was trash basketing. The root system was huge and full of all kinds of things. If it was in the US, it woulda had Coke cans, Big Mac wrappers, and cigarette butts in it. Roots radiated out in all directions and the plant might have been at the top of a stump??? I'll have to try to track it down, but it might have been in a book (gasp!) that I don't own. Anyway, I saw some home-grown hybrids doing that down here at the Lakeland show this September too.

As far as where crowns aim in wild plants, I'm sure one would find a broad range depending on species and where it is growing. Too many to generalize. No reason we can't use funneling to our advantage though. On the converse, I've had massive plants suddenly go downhill later to discover a massive root system perfectly dry because all the leaves were carrying water away from the pot and too much media being covered by leaves.

Anyway, I think we agree.

Yes we agree. Whether nutrients are applied to the leaves, stems, or roots they benefit the plant.

The Catasetums I'm familiar with in Peru generally hosted ant nests. The ants built some structure around the plant base and roots creating a ball. The little devils made it pretty impossible to collect a plant! This was mainly with plants that grew in a limb crotch and the plants tended to grow more upright than hanging because of the ant support. Maybe the ants are symbiotic by providing protection to the plants or maybe the ants provide some form of nutrient assist for the roots, I doubt anyone has studied it. Other Catasetum plants that grew on the sides of tree trunks tended to hang downward with the roots growing up the trunk.

The roots grow upwards because that is the direction needed for support. If the roots grew down the weight of the plant would just peel the roots off the trunk and all would fall down.

 

[gonewild]

I'm curious as to how many of us growers water/feed there plants strictly by adding water to the pots or root zone reservoirs (as for hydro or Semi hydroponic systems) without getting any water on the leaves. If you are misting foliage, then are you using purified/RO water? Because there are nutrients of concern in all non purified surface waters, and we still wouldn't have a controled experiment of foot vs leaf uptake of nutrients.

Most growers, including myself (at least in GH's) tend to just spray the whole world, and realy couldn't define foliar only feeding regimes. But unless you have your whole collection in a single source watering trough, it would take way too long to carefully water individual pots without getting leaves wet.

So unless I'm not doing true foliar feeding by flipping plants upside down to get the bottoms of leaves wet, then who will ever know whether its the stuff going in through the leaves or through the roots?

I've seen some great plants grown SH, but I have not seen a unversal success to SH grown plants, and the FCC's are dominated by "traditional" splash fed/watered plants. So its apparent that feeding isn't the whole story, and there seems to be too many differences between species to generalize for perfection.

Yep, we will never really know the answer about foliar feed vs root feed and if either or is more important.

It is obvious plants like a shower.... just take a walk through the forest after a rain....everyone is happy.

Remember that rain is not pure water and is often (maybe always) supplemented with nutrients from the atmosphere.

 

[tim]

These are interesting questions - using a Stanford login to see some of the other articles results in some gems with regard to foliar feeding (I'm quoting here in some cases because I believe the pdfs are not accessible unless you have a university login - please contact me if you want more info)....

foliar fert result in Phals and Mokara:
http://www.actahort.org/books/878/878_37.htm

foliar feeding in mangos:
http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search/display.do?f=1986/PH/PH86011.xml;PH8510716

fertilizer in Vanda Ms. Joaquim (click on the pdf at the bottom - among others, it intimates that high K and P are essential in making larger flowers - that flower size was only affected by K and P).
http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/5985

Foliar fertilizer use developed for use in cereal crops - Gooding MJ, Davies WP (1992) Foliar urea fertilization of cereals: a review. Fert Res 32:209–222

"The strong competition existing for nitrogen in epiphytic ecosystems could have allowed plants to develop the capacity to absorb nitrogen in a more or less reduced form, such as ammonium, urea or other organic forms, instead of nitrate, as most terrestrial tropical plants. Moreover, it has been shown that for certain epiphytic bromeliads, urea absorbed by foliar trichomes represents one of the principal sources of nitrogen " - Endres L, Mercier H (2001) Influence of nitrogen forms on the growth and nitrogen metabolism of bromeliads. J Plant Nut 24:29–42

lots and lots more...try google scholar for "foliar fertilizer orchid"

For more on fertilizer from Floricultura, have a look at page four of this (but understand they grow a limited type of plant - mostly Deperle-types)
http://www.floricultura.nl/Upload/Bestanden/TCENG/433719_09-Paphiopedilum-ENG.pdf

I would have to disagree that fertilizer for orchids is not very important. Perhaps better to say not very important to the home grower. Every single major producer of orchids has a definitive fertilizing schedule - in many cases if the nursery is licensed by the state a full fertilization scheme has to be submitted and approved before a business license is issued. Since chemistry is often the thing understood least by hobbyists (and I'm including myself here for sure), it is often the most ignored...that doesn't mean it is unimportant, just that it is poorly understood.

I use Peters 20-20-20 with cal-mag and 17-7-17 Nutricote. I fertilize dilutely and don't measure EC and therefore I am not as careful or technical as I should, and consequently I get sub-optimal growth.

 

[Kavanaru]

I think actually the roots of plants like the Catasetums that grow upwards are actualy doing so for support rather than seeking nutrients.

Ok, I stay out of the rest of the discussion on nutrition of Paph and Co, but regarding this one, I have to give my two cents and agree that Catasetum do produce this aerial spikes (they are spikes more than roots - yes, I know, they are roots, but they are hard as spikes.. that's what I mean) to catch fallen leave and other falling material. However, Catasetum (by the way, not a CAM genus, but C3!) are very heavy feeders and are adapted to a medium where most orchdis would not survive very long: rotten wood and organic compounds. They need to absorb as much mutrients (and water) as possible in a very short period of time. These kind of "collecting roots" are more evident in those species growing under very hard conditions: periods of heavy rain but drying out very quick, and very dry and hot periods. Species growing in more regular conditions do not tend to produce this kind of root. As well, species which normally produce this kind of roots, do not produce them very often if they have a steady and normally high supply of nutrient (e.g. artificial culture in pots - in many years growing Cataetum, I have had "collecting" roots only in the plants grown on the trees and left to the natural conditions!).
Normally, Catasetum gets support from the "normal" roots, which extend on teh surface ot the supporting wood, but also go inside the wood for up to 30 cm (at leats the ones I have seen in the wild, and would not be surprise if they can be longer), literally anchoring the plants in the decaying trunk!

 

[Kavanaru]

The Catasetums I'm familiar with in Peru generally hosted ant nests. The ants built some structure around the plant base and roots creating a ball. The little devils made it pretty impossible to collect a plant! This was mainly with plants that grew in a limb crotch and the plants tended to grow more upright than hanging because of the ant support. Maybe the ants are symbiotic by providing protection to the plants or maybe the ants provide some form of nutrient assist for the roots, I doubt anyone has studied it. Other Catasetum plants that grew on the sides of tree trunks tended to hang downward with the roots growing up the trunk.

Lance, indeed there are studies about these symbiosis. Ants get a supporting structure for their nests and until certain extent protection from the plant, as well as other supplies, while the Catasetum benefits of extra nutrient from decaying "ant-nest" material, increased humidy around the roots, ants protetion and so on..

as per the hanging Catasetum, are you sure they were the same species? there are few Catasetum species which normally (in some species alweays) grow hanging... I know Cataseum which associates to ants in Venezuela, and those individual plants without ants (yes, not all individuasl succeed with the ants) also grow upwards... on the other hand, Catasetum longifolium, a hanging speciues, sometimes associates with ants or termites, and still grows hanging.

The roots grow upwards because that is the direction needed for support. If the roots grew down the weight of the plant would just peel the roots off the trunk and all would fall down.

see my previous post where I explain about the roots growing into the wood.... Those are the roots that give support to the plants. The "collecting" roots, are very fine and do not attach to anthing aroung, therefore being "useless" when it refers to holding or attaching the plant to the trunk.

 

[cnycharles]

interesting discussion. I read a paper and mentioned it here maybe a year ago that showed that nutrients from sea water 'fog' was one of the main sources of nitrogen in cloud forests in south or central america; cold and warm water sources mixing created the condition, and the fog moving over the plants supplied them with an amazing amount of fertilizer. also it's supposed that rain from lightning storms contains nitrogen or other nutrients created by the lightning which washes down in the rain. so besides bird poop and decaying plants there are possible sources of nutrients being made available even if it isn't raining (even in the 'pure' dew(maybe)).

also, it was mentioned that plants that had leaf fans were noticed to have roots that grew up a tree; i'd suggest that this may not an adaptation to collect water running off of leaves but pure physics in that roots purely growing down from a plant on a tree likely wouldn't be able to hold up to the strain of keeping a plant on a tree, without ripping off. roots growing up the tree would be more likely to endure the strain and keep the plant on the tree

I think yin tung wang did research with foliar feeding and phal hybrids and showed that foliar feeding was very helpful; though it's almost 11pm and since what I read was a while ago I could be mixing a few different things together (and phals normally have very waxy leaves which seemingly would repel water and nutrients). of course normally during wet seasons phals can get inundated with water/rain, so the waxiness could be to prevent the rain from leaching out what's inside, or just protect the plants from the pounding of rain

ray, it's interesting that you mention here previously about s/h roots doing better when they are placed on a heat mat; i've told people that s/h could work for them but I didn't think it worked well for me because conditions would be too cool for me in winter but if they could warm up the roots the whole plant would be warmer and do better. my first growing shelf when I moved to this apartment had heating coils from an aquarium heater/bucket of water, which was piped underneath the shelf where the plants were. I think they liked it, but I unfortunately collected more plants than I had space for on that shelf so I ended up removing it though I did have the idea about using a small tank water heater to pipe warm water into each shelf, kind of like the flexible tubing benches used to warm the air underneath plants. i'll bet this would work well for s/h plants/pots (really going off on a tangent)

 

[Rick]

I have a handful of Gongora that also do the "trash basket" roots as well as the thick standard roots.

Mine are in hanging baskets of moss so I do get to see a lot of roots. Most are about an 1/8" diameter and weave around in the moss and basket. But then there's a bunch that poke straight up from the surface of the basket that are hard and about 1/16 in diameter. Very spiky too.

Between the Gongora and Coryanthes, they seem to be real ant magnets in my GH:sob:

 

[Erythrone]

From the book 'The physiology of tropical orchds in relation to the industry-Second Edition (2004).

"The controversy of adotping eigher foliar or root feeding of fertilisers remains unresolved. This is attributed to the fact that we have little information on the efficiency of mineral utake using the 2 methods of application".

An interesting point about organic fetriliser: "There is evidence to indicate that a combination of organic and inorganic fertilisers gives better orchids growth"

 

[TyroneGenade]

Remember that rain is not pure water and is often (maybe always) supplemented with nutrients from the atmosphere.

Very good point. Rain condenses on dust particles (e.g. in Florida the bulk of the dust comes from the iron rich red soil Sahara desert). Living downwind from an industrial complex is probably not that great for your orchids.

"...Moreover, it has been shown that for certain epiphytic bromeliads, urea absorbed by foliar trichomes represents one of the principal sources of nitrogen " - Endres L, Mercier H (2001) Influence of nitrogen forms on the growth and nitrogen metabolism of bromeliads. J Plant Nut 24:29–42

I guess this backs up Lance's bird poop point. Bird poop is full of urea.

This is the best kettle of worms I have opened up in a long while oke: Whatever the reality of foliar vs root feeding it seems any plain old balanced NPK fert will work just as well as anything fancy if fed in moderation. This is particularly irritating as I bought a bottle of Kalpak yesterday (and am now spraying it about like a mad man), passing over the tub of 18:18:18 orchid bloom booster. :sob:

 

[gonewild]

as per the hanging Catasetum, are you sure they were the same species?

No not sure about the species. Plants were not always blooming and there was several species that probably are undescribed. I collected what I think to be 9 different species and there were a lot more that were not collected.
But I am relatively sure that some of the species were growing with both habits. Some of the plants that were hanging after being collected and planted on tree branches or crotches in the garden grew more upright with the root mass effect.

t

here are few Catasetum species which normally (in some species alweays) grow hanging...

I saw Catasetum longifolium growing on palms and hanging maybe 5' long. Very cool plant. I've seen it with both root structure types.
What i saw was as the palm grows and sheds it's fronds the Catasetums fall if the roots were growing in the mass style were if the plant actually attaches to the bare trunk and grows the support type roots then the plant is secure for what could be the life of the palm. Now another point of interest is that these two situations involve 2 different palm species. The Catasetum that had mass roots and fell from the tree was growing in a Shapaja palm in an open field. The Catasetum that was secure on the trunk with long roots was growing on an Aguaje palm in a lake. Neither plant would receive much fertility from falling leaves as there was no upper canopy. The plant growing on the Shapaja would endure long dry periods where the plant on the Aguaje would have a constant humidity from the water below.

What this has do with foliar feed i don't know but I bet there is something?

I know Cataseum which associates to ants in Venezuela, and those individual plants without ants (yes, not all individuasl succeed with the ants) also grow upwards... on the other hand, Catasetum longifolium, a hanging speciues, sometimes associates with ants or termites, and still grows hanging.

Yes and it does produce both types of root structures.

see my previous post where I explain about the roots growing into the wood.... Those are the roots that give support to the plants. The "collecting" roots, are very fine and do not attach to anthing aroung, therefore being "useless" when it refers to holding or attaching the plant to the trunk.

The roots would penetrate the decaying wood just like growing in a pot of fir bark. But when the plant grows on decaying wood it is somewhat like a suicide mission.... soon the support tree will fall away and the orchid will die.

 

[gonewild]

(and phals normally have very waxy leaves which seemingly would repel water and nutrients). of course normally during wet seasons phals can get inundated with water/rain, so the waxiness could be to prevent the rain from leaching out what's inside, or just protect the plants from the pounding of rain

As you say the waxy leaves would seemingly be to repel water. But do we really know what the waxy coating is really about? Does it have a function like maybe to absorb nutrients from the air or leaf surface?

 

[Kavanaru]

The roots would penetrate the decaying wood just like growing in a pot of fir bark. But when the plant grows on decaying wood it is somewhat like a suicide mission.... soon the support tree will fall away and the orchid will die.

yeap! and that's normally the fate of Catasetumin the wild... therefore they grow pretty quick (you can have a blooming plant from seeds in less than 3 years sometimes!) and produce the highest numbers of seeds in the orchid's world! Other Catasetinae, like some Cycnoches and Mormodes species have even shorter lifes than catasetum in the wild for the very same reason. It is not rare to find large Catasetinae plants laying on the ground, after they fell down... and Of course, there are some species that last longer and or are adapted tomore stable substrates, e.g. the terrestrial species...

 

[gonewild]

Whatever the reality of foliar vs root feeding it seems any plain old balanced NPK fert will work just as well as anything fancy if fed in moderation. This is particularly irritating as I bought a bottle of Kalpak yesterday (and am now spraying it about like a mad man), passing over the tub of 18:18:18 orchid bloom booster. :sob:

One thing I have never see in all the time I have spent walking through orchid habitat is kelp extract falling from the sky. oke:

 

[Ernie]

One thing I have never see in all the time I have spent walking through orchid habitat is kelp extract falling from the sky. oke:

And has the rain or dew ever been blue with Peter's 20-20-20??? oke:

We do see lizard poop on our orchid leaves down here.

 

[gonewild]

And has the rain or dew ever been blue with Peter's 20-20-20??? oke:

It's raining blue water right now outside here. But somehow I don't think it is from Peter?

We do see lizard poop on our orchid leaves down here.

Bird poop, lizard poop, frog poop......... giving it some thought maybe the most important poop for plants is from insects. Anyone know the nutrient content of insect poop?

 

[Rick]

It's raining blue water right now outside here. But somehow I don't think it is from Peter?



Bird poop, lizard poop, frog poop......... giving it some thought maybe the most important poop for plants is from insects. Anyone know the nutrient content of insect poop?

Probably depends on what kind of insects and what they are eating.oke: I think you forgot bat poop (which is like concentrated digested insects).

 

[Eric Muehlbauer]

I would think that insect poop (which has uric acid, like bird and lizard poop) would be in tiny particles more easily broken down...and a lot of insects could lead to a lot of very tiny turds more evenly distributed.