Dendrobium speciosum on boulder

[Foggy Paul]

Hi all. This would be a better question for an orchid forum, but I'm not on any, so I'll ask here. I bought a nice D. speciosum yesterday with a couple of flower spikes getting ready to open. It's in a pot with a coarse gravel medium. I plan to mount it on a boulder in the garden. Should I wait to do so until after it has flowered? We have a stretch of cool, wet weather coming up so I will wait until that has passed, but I'm guessing the flowers will last quite a while. TIA.

[Tracy]

Definitely wait for it to finish blooming before you try replanting it.  I just had this discussion with my friend Harry while touring his garden today.   Harry’s brother is Andy of Andy's Orchids here in Leucadia. 

I was picking up this Dendrobium speciosum Hillii.  He recommended very shallow pots for me to replant some of my smaller specimens.   I planted ssp Grandiflora on a thin bark layer on top of a rock that is slowly rooting after 2 years in the ground. 

[Silas_Sancona]

1 hour ago, Foggy Paul said:

Hi all. This would be a better question for an orchid forum, but I'm not on any, so I'll ask here. I bought a nice D. speciosum yesterday with a couple of flower spikes getting ready to open. It's in a pot with a coarse gravel medium. I plan to mount it on a boulder in the garden. Should I wait to do so until after it has flowered? We have a stretch of cool, wet weather coming up so I will wait until that has passed, but I'm guessing the flowers will last quite a while. TIA.

Yes ...Definitely wait until it has finished flowering before transplanting / mounting.. 

Once done flowering,  you should be ready to go..   Word to the wise? bigger the boulder, the better ..  Specimens of these can get BIG, fairly quickly  if happy.   ...unless crammed into a tiny pot instead of being allowed to spread out..

Example of a happy specimen given some room from the net..



 

[happypalms]

Nice plant they are super tough. Rain does spoil flowers no matter what type of flower. I don’t  plant anything of special value or rare in winter, pretty well much about 5 weeks before winter I stop planting, fertilising and start to reduce watering as it gets colder. If I have a common dime a dozen plant I will plant in winter but that’s basically for something iam not to fussed on and your climate will dictate when you  can plant. Currently iam not going to plant any sabinara Magnifica now but will plant less super rare and exotics now as it’s just autum now planting can still be done in the next five weeks before the soil temperatures drop. Mounting it on a boulder will give the plant some thermal protection so a good idea to plant it on a rock. 

[Tracy]

I put my existing pots of Dendrobium speciosum onto larger pots as they grew.   The three in the tall ceramic pots were the ones that Harry recommended that I put in shallow pots after blooming season ends.  I threw in the photo of the Dendrobium speciosum ssp grandiflora that I planted in a shallow layer of bark on a partially exposed rock.  

All Dendrobium speciosum in this group are ssp Pendiculatum, Grandiflora or Curvicaule.