Paphiopedilum tigrinum

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gdupont

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Hi, all! Some of you may remember that awhile ago I was hoping to get a Paph. tigrinum for a reasonable price. I ended up purchasing one from Hengduan for $70, and it looks pretty good! It's near blooming size. The leaves are spotless and look quite healthy. My only reservation is that there were only 4-5 roots, and they all looked quite old, or in other words, not a lot of recent root growth. It came essentially bare-root, so I potted it up in a cut-open water bottle and some LECA. I hope it does well, and in particular, that the roots improve!

If anyone has culture tips, feel free to let me know. The main thing I've found in my research is to keep it fairly dry.

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Inocucor never hurts, I would let it establish to your new environment before doing anything really drastic, I'm not familiar with tigrinum, there are people here who are
 
Inocucor never hurts, I would let it establish to your new environment before doing anything really drastic, I'm not familiar with tigrinum, there are people here who are



Thanks for that suggestion! I actually hadn't even thought about inocucor, but I'll definitely try to get some and give it a try.


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Are you growing it semi-hydroponically?



Right now I am. Though, I' leaving the water level very very low in the bottom of the container, less than a cm deep, as I read that tigrinum likes it drier. If it doesn't seem to like this set-up, I'll try something more traditional, in basket culture.


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semi-hydro and 'dry' seem to be contradictory, to me.
Someone grows it in a basket with good success - search.



I agree, but at least two people on this forum have grown it this way and said that it did well enough.


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I would be extremely hesitant to grow tigrinum that way. Especially if you only have one. You'd be better off with bark charcoal and a bit of moss in a mesh pot. Except for full growing season, it likes to dry out often.
 
Would growing it in LECA in a normal pot, dry, work? I feel so far that they LECA dried out faster than the bark.
 
If lack of roots bothers you, doesn't Ray sell something called Kelpmax that is supposed to kick up the root production after repotting?

Also, regarding the wet/dry discussion, in the past I have grown Cattleya aclandiae in s/h with no problems at all. The roots grew down into the liquid reservoir and were as healthy as any I've seen. C. aclandiae is supposed to be a small dry condition lover type cattleya. I even got it to bloom that way. Too bad paphs are so expensive, otherwise you could buy two and grow each one differently (one in s/h, one in bark or whatever) and see how they react.
 
Would growing it in LECA in a normal pot, dry, work? I feel so far that they LECA dried out faster than the bark.

I certainly can speak about all brands of LECA, but in my experience, LECA is one of the slowest media to dry completely.

Looking at the surface of the particles, it may look dry, but assuming it has been in use a while, so is fully saturated, it takes a long time to totally dry out.

In the hectic world of prepping our house for sale, I have had paphs sitting, unwatered for as much as six or seven weeks, and they showed absolutely no sign of stress. By contrast, similar plants in bark or even sphagnum looked a bit limp after two weeks.
 

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