Early or late Spike on Armeniacum

Slippertalk Orchid Forum

Help Support Slippertalk Orchid Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
HP7, are you sure this is P. armeniacum ? The foliage looks quite strange ?
Well, it has not bloomed before as it is a large seedling that is going to bloom for the first time, but it looks rather typical of the species to me. It just has a lot more silver area than some. The leaves also have signature jagged edge.
 
Well, it has not bloomed before as it is a large seedling that is going to bloom for the first time, but it looks rather typical of the species to me. It just has a lot more silver area than some. The leaves also have signature jagged edge.
We will see how the flower looks like. Good luck and fingers crossed.
 
Well, the spike gradually (super slow!!) rose over the course of months, but then it turned brown just a couple of weeks ago.
My Barbara Larkin ( Fumi's Delight x armeniacum) blasted its high bud for 4th year in a row.
As frustrating as all this is, I have one armeniacum in bud and another one just sending a spike out. Fingers crossed!!
 
What’s your humidity?
It's not the humidity. Armeniacum needs consistently cool days and cold nights during the winter months to do their best.
This is why plants from high altitude do not do well at lower elevations.
Of course, there are rare exceptions like one member who has a basket full of armeniacum in dry indoor and he says his winter low is high 60s. This is certainly a case of exception.
I grow this species knowing that I don't have the right conditions. ;)
I have bloomed a few armeniacum, micranthum and a couple of Fumi's Delight. I just did not like any of them and gave them all away or sold them. 😁
 
It's not the humidity. Armeniacum needs consistently cool days and cold nights during the winter months to do their best.
This is why plants from high altitude do not do well at lower elevations.
Of course, there are rare exceptions like one member who has a basket full of armeniacum in dry indoor and he says his winter low is high 60s. This is certainly a case of exception.
I grow this species knowing that I don't have the right conditions. ;)
I have bloomed a few armeniacum, micranthum and a couple of Fumi's Delight. I just did not like any of them and gave them all away or sold them. 😁
I understand the tell stuff. I have bloomed armeniacum indoors. I think your buds are blasting due to low humidity.
 
Nope. It is not the humidity. it's the inconsistent temperature range and fluctuations of it throughout the season for proper development.
Only plants that grow nearly wet or bathed in thick fogs in the wild will be very sensitive to less-than-ideal humidity and the results are often seen almost immediately on lots of those miniature orchids from high clouds mountains in the South America as well as most Draculas.
Other than that, plants fare surprisingly well under less-than-ideal humidity as long as the watering is kept up.
 
Think about other slipper species, most of which come from area with very high humidity.
You don't hear people report issues blooming things like lowii, hainanense or liemianum for example. Sure, they will grow better with proper humidity just like all other plants not just orchids, but they will bloom easily at dry home as long as watering is kept up.
With things like armeniacum and micranthum that come from part of the world that have cold winter and mild summer (rarely over mid 70s in the summer, Yunnan is not hot in the summer), It is a completely differernt story. Armeniacum has even much narrower distribution than micranthum that has very wide distribution covering much of the southwestern China into northen Vietnam. Micranthum also occur in much lower elevation all the way up to similar elevations as armeniacum but they don't occur in the same region.

I challenge you to grow armeniacum in enclosed case for constantly high humidity, but temperature is also constantly warm well over 70F for all time. Chances are they won't even set buds or more likely you will see them but they won't properly develop and wither away gradually with the rare exception of weirdo like that one in the basket we all saw here years ago if you get very lucky.

You go to some nurseries where they keep the plants cool in the summer and cold in the winter, they have a lot of armeniacum and micranthum in bloom in the early spring in their greenhouse.
 
Very interesting. I am still skeptical that humidity doesn’t play a factor. I am able to maintain the cold temps in my windows and keep the humidity up during bloom cycles by housing plants in open aquaria with wet pebbles on which pots rest. Works for me. Before I did this I was blasting buds. Different strokes!
 
Very interesting. I am still skeptical that humidity doesn’t play a factor. I am able to maintain the cold temps in my windows and keep the humidity up during bloom cycles by housing plants in open aquaria with wet pebbles on which pots rest. Works for me. Before I did this I was blasting buds. Different strokes!
I'm not saying humidity doesn't play any role. It could only help to have proper humidity.
As I said in my previous post, based on comparison and observation that other species that comes from habitat with just as much humidity or much higher humidity (cochlopetalums comes from area that's dripping wet all the time like certain phrags in their habitat like besseae for example) but without significant cooling period have no problem flowering at low humidity whereas armeniacum is a different story. So this helps me rule out humidity isn't the only thing or at least not the main contributor why armeniacum is such pain in the butt for many.
The main differences between armeniacum and those species (and many more!) I took for example are the presence of cold winter and high elevations almost any other species. Tigrinum comes close.
 
Back
Top