Wow, Brooke! Those are gorgeous. The colors are so intense! Are they waxy/shiny? I love those darker bars near the column.

They're like the three beautiful sisters-- each one lovelier than the others.

If they were mine, I think I'd be a pig and keep them all. LOL

Miss Piggy

You need to keep them all, as the flower quality will only improve with maturity. And they all look good at first bloom!

jeanne

Brooke, my advice is to keep plant #2 & sell #1 & #3 to me! They are beautiful! I would love to ask you a couple questions about ordering these compots from Orchidview & keeping them alive. I have never deflasked seedlings & am wondering how difficult it might be to keep them alive. I really want to get some of their blue hybrids without paying hundreds of dollars for blooming sized plants. But I do not want to order those flasks if I am just going to kill them all! Can you tell me how you deflasked them, prepped for potting, potted them, & cared for them until they were old enough to put into a regular bark mix? Is there a website where you learned about deflasking & potting needs for seedlings? Also, how many plants were in the flask? How many survived? Thanks!!!

-Ray-

I would keep #2 but that is STRICTLY from my perspective as a total orchid newbie.

The darker bands on the middle one look like radiating ripples coming out from a pebble tossed into water..... the spots look like little splashes from the pebble.

Okay, so there is some artistic liscense in my interpretation... but I would still keep the middle one.

Alexa

I love them all! I wouldn't be able to pick just one!! They are all just beautiful Brooke!
Pat....

The middle one had the best overall form and the one on the right has good colour. I'd keep both, at least for one more year and decide which one is best, after some maturation.

-Cj

Thanks for the replies and glad you enjoyed them. It has been a fun experience to watch the differences in the ten seedlings.

#4 has opened now and is totally different than the first three. It is mustard yellow with brick red spots and no, I don't like it but will hang on to it to see if it does change. #5 is also in spike.

The other five seedlings show no indication of spikes. All from the same compot, all grown side by side, all have different leaf color.

LOL Alexa, indeed poetic license.

Cj - are you still interested in the Guatamalensis? Shipping season is arriving around here, maybe.

Ray these seedlings were from a compot, not a flask. If you can grow a seedling in a 2" pot, you can grow out a compot in your conditions.

I have done a total of four flasks. Two flasks contained seven plants each - tetraspis x gigantea. Another flask was bellina x sanderiana and the fourth was amboinensis x sanderiana.

My original instructions were to deflask, rinse the agar off and pot into sphag compots. Some of them straight out of flask were big enough to go into 2" pots, the rest into 4" pots with nine (I think) plants per compot. Then the plants had to harden off to the real world by keeping the humidity up around the plants. By day four, they were in the real world.

I am including a link to Big Leaf where Peter Lin explains unflasking. The only thing I did different was I did not let the plantlets air dry before potting them up.

Brooke

Here is a link that might be useful: deflasking

You'll do just fine there Ray. I bought a couple of inexpensive flacks off E-bay (Oncidium lindenii and Ionopsis utricularioides) a month or so ago and have had very good luck with them. There were 11 tiny plants in the Oncid flask and 15 plants in the other. I've had about a 90% survival with both. I have already mounted the Ionopsis babies and some of the oncids and it was at that point they really took off!! I started a very weak fert right from the start. Here's a couple of my babies, just about a mouth out of flask! Next!! Phalaenopsis!! Give it a try Ray!!
Oncidium lindenii
{{gwi:150055}}
Ionopsis utricularioides
{{gwi:150056}}

Neat pcan!

Brooke

Brooke,

Great job!

I'm inspired. I shall investigate getting some wee ones this spring!

--Stitz--

Brooke, I love them all!!! How can you choose? Let us know if you are going to "trade" any of the others. Love the color!!

Thanks Brooke & Pcan! I actually called up orchidview today to find out about flasks... she said as you did Pcan, start with something a lot cheaper, so if I completely screw it up, it will not be such an expensive learning experience... so I just paid the $35 apiece for the different phal. violacea blues that they had for sale. I am going to hold on to the idea of deflasking my own plants & pay a visit to e-bay later this week. Pcan would you recommend the grower you got yours from? If so, what was their name?

-Ray-

Ray, so was the 35.00 for a plant? If so,what size? Do you know if it is guaranteed a blue? Sorry for all the questions but I was on their site as well yesterday and it was hard to tell what you are buying. I would LOVE a blue!!

Sorry Brooke for getting off topic here. :)

Hi Ray, the Oncidium came from "flanativeplants" and the Ionopsis from "topmacsniper" (both e-Bay). Both shipped out quickly and the flasks were in good shape. If you just run a search "flask" you will pull up a lot of flask sellers. Be careful tho, look at the feedback.

I got the Ionopsis because I had read that this grows wild in Florida. The vender was in Florida, so I thought that would be a good place to start. They have really done well for me.

Be prepared. When you open up the box and pull the flask out the plants are jumbled all over the flask and the agar is all over the flask and all over the little plants. A little bit surprising after looking at the flask on-line with all the little plants sitting neatly on the bottom of the flask. The link that Brooke gave you will get you on the right track, but like Brooke, I never let these little plants "dry out"......I put them straight into sphag in very small pots, and kept them in an old aquarium with hood and light for about a week - removing the lid just a bit each day to get the tiny plants use to the less than 100% humidity they had known in flask.

Give it a try Ray! It's a big kick to watch these very tiny plants just take off!! Almost like they are grateful to be out of that bottle!!
Good Luck!!
Pat....

What is the difference between a flask plant and a compot? If I was going to venture into this game, which should I start with?

Thanks

Alexa

A flask is the womb in which the seeds were hatched. They are sterile and not used to the real world. A compot is made from the seedlings just out of the flask, hardened off and growing already. Both are fun, but the compot seedlings should have fewer problems and can sit alongside your regular plants of that type.

t-bred no such thing as highjacking a thread - the more the merrier on whatever. I will put your name on a future blooming seedling so it can have a good home. I still have five from this compot to bloom, another compot of elevan plants and 70+ seedlings that were unflasked last summer. I will probably be beggining for homes :>)

Ray I got two of Norton's blue (hopefully) seedlings last year from two different blue crosses. I've seen pics of some from the same cross and they are very dark blue - if you use your imagination. Mine will probably bloom magenta :>( but I don't care, a violacea is a violacea.

Both of mine are in spike now so in a couple of months, I might see blue!

Stitz you need some of those tiny 2" pots to care of - it'll give you something to fret over :>)

Brooke

Thanks!

I am off to search for compots to order. You DID warn me that this would become a new obsession during the hosta and DL dormant season... boy were you right! I am up to 10 orchids since last fall LOLOLOL!

Alexa

I recognize a plantaholic when I see one :>)

Contact orchidview.com by phone and see what they have that might interest you. The two compots I got from them last year were all ready to be up potted to 2" pots and a year later, blooms!

No hosta eyes popping out of the ground yet. I do NOT want a repeat of last year.

Brooke

Hey guys, I paid $35/ seedling in pots. They are all grown from seeds so there is always a chance that they will come out with a color variation. But Katherine (or orchidview) said that so far every blue violacea crossed by another blue violacea has produced violaces plants that bloom blue flowers! I ordered two of the "Phal. Violacea Blue Elegance"

I am going to visit Ruben in Orchids sometime soon & try one of their flasks. They will also flask your orchid seeds (for a small fee). So I am thinking about crossing some of my ascocentrums & aerides or try making something really unnatural like Phal. x Aerides. I am sure that some things won't work, but it could be fun making new freaks of nature!

Maybe I will get a flask of enc. Phoenicia (the chocolate scented orchid from Cuba) and use them for trading or something =0)

-Ray-

Hey, Ray. E phoenicea flasks-- what a great idea!

And those intense blue vio's at Orchidview are heavenly. Great picks!

Pat, love your picture sequences showing how you grow, or changes in things. They really are very encouraging to everyone, and look what you did enabling Ray! :)

If I knew how, I would put them in the FAQ.

BTW, that is one fat, happy little Oncid guy-- reminds me of Uno the Beagle wagging his happy little behind at everyone. :)

How do you photograph the blooms to get that saturated black background? It really makes the blooms POP.

Alexa

PS, Brooke, I sent you an email, please let me know if you got it.....

The black background is a black cloth, similar to velvet. Anything non-shiny gives the effect.

Sorry I didn't get an email via GW but I've sent you one. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but please try again. GW email can be a PITA!

Brooke

My fourth compot seedling bloomed and as you can see, totally different from the first three. The base color is mustard and the spots are brick colored. Not very attractive to me but I will keep this one for another bloom cycle to see if the muddy yellow color improves.

{{gwi:150057}}

The fifth seedling has also bloomed but it is a slightly smaller replica of #2 and #3.

Brooke

Isn't Nature weird?!?! I have seen a recent show on Discovery Channel where they talk about how the mutation of one single gene can create these types of dramatic mutations in siblings. Granted, it may not make for happy results every time, but it could lead to some pretty cool "freaks".

B.T.W. repotted the blue Phal. violacea from Orchidview, they had very strong root systems! Another endorsement for their plants!

-Ray-

Ray, it doesn't take a mutation of any gene to produce variation among sibs-- that's what sexual reproduction is for (from nature's point of view). An individual gets a sample of genes from each parent, and each sibling gets a different sample, hence has a different genetic makeup.

You can actually see large variations among sibs in any family with lots of children. *On average* the genetic similarity among ordinary siblings is 50%, but it actually can range from nearly zero to nearly 100%.

This is nature's Ace in the Hole-- when disaster in the form of some infection arrives, it won't get them all-- some outlier will manage to survive. This assumes no inbreeding.

I once worked with a Genetics prof who maintained an inbred strain of mice used for cancer research. The strain was so inbred they were all identical genetically, and many, many physiological characteristic were known. This made a perfect backdrop so that various treatments could show clear results against the known background without a lot of variability (aka "error").

BUT the practical effect was that any infection that killed one of them was going to kill them all, every single one. That would have wiped out his years of work creating the strain. Needless to say he was a crazy person about following sanitary procedures in his lab. We had to shower and change into special clothes in an anteroom before even entering.

He once threatened to call the police to investigate a banana skin left in the lab by an unknown person. It was actually left there by an assistant of his who ate her lunch there against his sanitation rules. Needless to say she was afraid to confess, and he was afraid unknown people had found a way to get in and bring GERMS to kill his precious mice.

(BTW, it was not me, but a close friend of mine).

Probably more than anyone wanted to know...

Mehitabel ~ Excellent explanation and example of some of the benefits and pitfalls of "ordinary" (i.e. without mutation) heredity!

Sc

Cool Mehitable! I think its funny that he wanted to bring Police in to investigate with him being such a sanitation nut! I would have loved to see him making the cops sanitize themselves before they entered the lab!

So here is a question for you (now knowing about your past involvement in labs) Have you ever tried growing orchids from Nodes? I realize this should be a different thread, but just wanted to ask. I've been researching it & thinking about trying it on one of my favorite vandas & phals that are currently in spike.

-Ray-

Oh Wow ....I love that one too!!
Nice Brooke!!

Here is an update on the #2 seedling. Like a good phal mom, I cut the spike so the seedling could grow roots and leaves and not use it's energy to support a spike.

Look what I found on this exuberant child

{{gwi:150058}}

At first I thought it was a root but there is a root right in back of this and the growing tips are the purple-ish color. It is growing roots, a new leaf and it appears to be two spikes growing, one right above the other.

Teenagers certainly have a mind of their own. He still has five siblings that haven't even spiked once yet!

Brooke

WOO HOO!!! What a rewarding plant! Good luck with that little guy! Tell me, how long did you let the first spike stay on there before you cut it back?

-Ray-

Ray it was probably 3 weeks or so. As soon as my husband got a suitable picture I removed it - it had already opened a second flower. I also wanted to give it time to fully develop so I could measure the bloom and see how long the intensity of color lasted.

How are your Norton seedlings doing? My two Norton blue crosses are growing again. One has two spikes and one has three. Again, these eager 'chids are not following my rules :>)

Brooke

Wow! You are doing very well with your Phals! I bought two of the Phal. Blue Elegance from their N0385 flasks. Katherine told me that these are still relatively young so it might take up to a year for it to start blooming =0( I usually have a more difficult time getting Phals to rebloom because my air temps are more suited for Vanda & Cattleya alliance orchids. However, they are super healthy, new roots growing like CrAzY & both have new leaves starting out.

On a side note, I am sure you have heard of R.F. Orchids right? I had another event to video tape this evening in Boca Raton. I had suggested to the president of the club that they put some orchids on their palms in the entrance by the valet to help add to the tropical look they were going for. I also suggested that they visit R.F. orchids website to see what would grow well in their area. I think that was about 2 months ago when I last shot an event there. Tonight as I am driving up to the valet area I see dozens of Vandas, lots of oncidiums, tons of epidendriums mounted on trees, in large ceramic pots, mounted to water fall rocks, etc. It was AMAZING!!! I guess he really took my advice to heart! The thing that amazed me was that they were all from R.F. Orchids! I knew that these people had money to burn, but I had no idea they had that much! R.F. is one of the most expensive growers I have ever bought from & they must have had at least 100+ blooming orchids newly mounted/potted!

-Ray-

Seedling update with #5 blooming now. The color is much lighter and the back of the bloom is a light bronze color. As the bloom ages, it is taking on an orange color. Bloom size is 3". I will definitely keep this another year.

{{gwi:150059}}

Here is a first blooming phal with the pedigree of H. P. Norton 'Orchidview' x Krull's Red Hot Mist 'Apopka' AM/AOS. This makes the sire the same breeding as my seedlings. The color is more intense than any of my seedlings to date but the bloom is only 2" wide. Nice form but much smaller.

{{gwi:150060}}

Brooke

Hey, Brooke. Love the color on that #5-- almost orange. Is it glossy? Couldn't quite tell, but color is lovely.

I like #5 too! I like ALL of them Brooke!! I can see I am in some big trouble when my Doc Charles flask starts to bloom out. I know that's going to be a while, but I am going to have a hard time with what stays and what goes...;0)
Pat......

Has anyone purchased from Orchidview recently? It appears that their online info is about a year old...

Tominnh it is always best to call them if you see something you want. Yes, I have another compot from them and they continue to breed great cutting edge phals.

Since this thread was resurrected, I will post the rest of the compot since they have all bloomed except #10 which I threw away this spring. It was still a 2" leaf span, cute as a button, but was never going to grow up to be like the brothers.

Here they are

#6 & 7 {{gwi:150061}} Another orange tone and a magenta.

#8 {{gwi:150062}} Another yellow with spots but this yellow is very clear unlike the brother from last year.

#9 {{gwi:150063}} Another orange with a much bigger bloom than any of the other siblings.

I am keeping #2 & #5 from last year and #8 & #9 from this year. The rest have gone to live with someone else.

Compots are fun and easy and make your friends happy when you decide which ones you want to keep :>)

Brooke

What a terrific variety! I wish that I had your patience. Great job, Brooke!!

--Stitz--

Patience with a huge dose of curiosity is needed :>)

I wonder if tominnh ever contacted them?

Brooke