Sorry, i cannot help because all my Tolumnia are hybrids. But, in any case you need to say more about where you have the orchid, day and night temperatures. Humidity levels and how often you are watering. Light levels.......

It is easy to overwater these little guys. The edges of the leaves close to the base look like that could be happening. I am careful to only mist early in the day and give them plenty of very bright light, but not full sun. If it is very cool, it especailly does not want to stay wet. Sometimes the old growth will not survive, but this time of year with temperatures rising, a new growth should soon start and be OK if it is not watered too much or late in the day.

I only have one species and it mounted on a stick. This one is easy to care for. I water it once or twice each day, depending on how hot the weather is. I also have a few hybrids, they are potted in a 2" clay pot filled with small bark chips. I watered these once every two days. All my tols are on my south windowsill and humidity is 40-60%. Your tol looks like dehydrated, easpecially the new roots get dried up. Try put more media around the base of the plant to have new roots covered.

In nature Tolumnias are the sickliest looking things imaginable. Wrinkled to nothing and yellow from the high light, but blooming.

Your's doesn't look bad at all. This time of year some shift growth pattern into spiking, or leaf growth, and the roots don't keep up with water loss. The damage on the margins looks like the edge rubbed against something, not like disease.

That plant is too little to be on its own though, with only two sets of leaves and no mother plant behind it growth is going to be slow for a couple of years.

I think I bought the same species at the same time you did. If it is from Andys then it was in a warm, ultra high humidity, high water environment. They always go down hill out in the real world until they grow a new set of roots large enough to keep up with the new environment.

Some of my plants are/were under a mister that comes on for one hour three times a day. They have high airflow and low humidity the rest of the time, in a bright greenhouse. The long direct exposure to water hydrates them much better than if they had to rely on a water retentive medium. I have accidently left Tolumnias in a bucket of water over night. They hydrate very well when that happens, even if they are root challenged. A little bit of fungicide in the water wouldn't hurt if you are afraid of something bad happening.

I have found that Tolumnias do better under lower light than most people recommend. Mine are in bright to mid indirect light, and growing light should always be lower than blooming light, especially for young plants.

Spiced Ham, it is interesting that you say Tolumnias do better under lower than the recommended amount of light. I do think that perhaps mine has been getting a little more light than the amount it was accustomed to getting before I bought it. I actually got this one from Orchids Limited here in Minnesota, the humidity was of course very high there, I think the light might have been lower as well.

This Tolumnia is a cutting from a mother plant, though it does have a growth of its own. You cannot see it in the picture I took, but there is a 4" long stolon with new growth that is is putting out roots.

I have been giving this orchid a misting every morning, and it is mounted on tree fern and coconut fiber. I think it dries out rather quickly, which I had thought was desirable for Tolumnia, but maybe it's drying out too quickly? I guess coconut fiber does not really retain moisture. Sphagnum would be overdoing it though, right?

Thank you for all the tips and suggestions.

If the larger attach growth is putting out roots it is busy and not getting enough water to the top plant. You see it in other orchids where the back bulbs shrivel a bit while the front is actively growing something. The water in the leaves is mostly extra stored water anyway. Do whatever you have to to keep the new growing root tips long, which means they are growing fast. Warm (85F)with high humidity is the best way to do this.

Small/young plant grow in cycles because they only have enough energy to do one thing at a time, so it sounds like your plant is busy growing roots on the lower plant, when it is done with that it might get back to growing the top, or the top may stay as it is and send out a stolonof its own. Those running Tolumnias do some unexpected things. They grow parts when and where they want to. You might want to try a section of tree fern post. It holds water a better so the roots grow into it, and you don't have to worry so much about a moss pad under the plant. I would start with some moss on the roots of the low/old plant and then pull it once roots grow into the post, but if you have growing roots now get them on the surface of the tree fern asap without moss, and water well.

The new roots are actually coming out of the little growth that is on the end of the stolon. The older/lower growth is attached to the treefern, and it has not grown any new roots.

The new growth is just dangling out there in the air. Should I orient the new growth so its roots go into the tree fern as well?

Thanks for your help.

I also have a small hybrid tol with only an old growth, a small newer growth. The newer one put out roots a month or two ago and those roots kept getting dried and died. I added in more bark chip to cover the base of the newer growth and haven't seen roots dying anymore.

Here are a couple pics, one is of the whole orchid, the other is just a picture of the newer growth, and single root that emerged a few days ago. The newer growth, and what appears to be another stolon growing out of it I cannot take credit for... that was all there when I bought the orchid.

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I would wrape some coconut fiber or sphag around the base of the new growth (or keiki).

I've never seen a keiki on a tol before, kewl...

I grow 7-8 hybrid tols, but no species.

I think the mother plant's roots look fairly good in the 2nd set of pics, I see active root growth so I'd keep misting. You may consider trying to lightly wrap the roots with spagh or tree fern or cnut-fiber to help keep them more 'moist' and re-hydrate the leaves, just be sure it dries out within a couple of hours.

As far as the keiki, I'd do nothing and wait until the roots were @2" long and then carefully remove from mother plant and repot/remount the new plant.

Bob

The mother plant (at Orchids Limited) that my Tolumnia was cut from was a vast entangled mass of stolons, offsets, and fine kinky little roots, all just dangling in the air, except for the mother plant that was rooted to a tree fern mounting. The wild mat-like growth habit is what attracted me to these orchids in the first place. Maybe itÂs not humid enough in my place for my orchid to develope that kind of growth, but for now I think I will let the keiki's roots hang as they are, and hopefully they will continue to look good. If they donÂt stay that way, I suppose IÂll have to couch them in some kind of moisture-retentive media.

th,

With this orchid mounted, even with the misting I would think that indoors in MN you will struggle to keep humidity up to needed levels, especially in winter. BTW: Home-made terrariums made from old (or new) aquariums can help a lot in maintaining humidity for smallish mounted plants. Look around there are threads on how to do this very cost effectively.

I grow indoors, under artificial lights and as far as light intensity; I grow some in very high light and some in lower light (but higher than phal light) and it 'seems' I get better blooming from the high-light plants, but the lower light ones do bloom also. I keep some of mine (ones with a lot of exposed roots) in a 55 gal terrarium set-up with 2 55watt cfls and high humidity (medium light) and keep the rest of them up close under several 85watt cfls. I mist them all every morning and the ones in the 'tank' in the early evenings also. I grow all of mine in clay pots with a mix of prime agra (LECA) and charcoal.

If you can keep the humidity high enough, it should do fine mounted. If not, you may need to consider potting or remounting so that it will fit YOUR conditions and not the greenhouse's from which it was purchased.

I experimented for several years with my tols before I finally hit upon the right potting methods and light that worked best for my conditions. But then I'm beginning to realize that perfecting an orchid's growing conditions is as rewarding a part of having orchids as are the flowers.

HTH,

Bob

Bob, You are right about MN - indoor living in winter is like being in the desert! Humidity levels in summertime here are often very high however. Thank you for sharing your experience with me. I had read about Tolumnia that mounting them with sphag often becomes tricky because it is not as easy to control how much moisture they are getting, since new sphagnum dries out at a different rate than sphagnum that is older. Potting them in charcoal or something else that retains moisture but does not necessarily stay "wet" is something I have considered doing. You're right that figuring out what the key conditions are for keeping plants happy is as rewarding as having them bloom. For now at least I will be preoccupied with just trying to keep mine mildly content! But hopefully they will be truly happy at some point... Thanks again for the advice.

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