Quote: >The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. >Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me
..sounds a lot like a shipment of orchids after the customs have had a 'look' at it. People have posted a lot of interesting views on just about everything except orchids in the past few weeks. I am not going to follow them, but I would draw your attention to our tenth anniversary scenarios for 2030, which represent an attempt by a large number of individual and collective contributors from dozens of nations to synthesise many of these issues: see http://www.chforum.org/scenarios/new/index2030.html The "home" index points to several hundred analytical papers on equivalent topics. Rather more on topic, I posted last year that we started to experiment with a new growing environment for some epiphytes. These grow in mesh-sided pots, hung with hooks from a 3 cm steel grid, itself bolted proud of a base of Astroturf backed with building-grade polystyrene slabs (Jablite). What stirred controversy was my remark that the plants had immediately rooted - with relish - into the Astroturf. Everything then stopped for the Northern winter, but I can now confirm that Astroturf is a highly favoured medium. For example, a Vanilla has thrown a 30 cm root along the grain of the matting in a matter of two weeks, with the leader into the may about 3mm in diameter, the root in the mat at least three times bigger. As the whole point of the exercise was mobility and modularity, this is not entirely welcome, but nevertheless interesting. I have some Phal. amabilis coming out of flask shortly and I shall place a couple on rolls of pure Astroturf - perhaps with some rock wool in the tube - to see what happens. I should perhaps mention that we have been careful not to get fertilizer onto the Astroturf, and that the roots are in pursuit of light, anchorage or water, but not nutrient. ______________________________ Oliver Sparrow +44 (0)20 7736 9716 www.chforum.org _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
