Growing Dendrobium Orchid

The Dendrobium plant is unusual in appearance, being sympodial, epiphytic, and bulbless, but possessed of heavy cane-like stems, which also produce the papery-green leaves.

Especially in the deciduous types these canes store sufficient moisture and food to tide the plant over periods of extreme drought.

The genus is divided into deciduous and evergreen, which again divides into warm- and cool-growing plants. All evergreen Dendrobes (the name affectionately given the genus by orchidists) are handsome plants with their leafy, graceful foliage.

They have cane-like stems, taking the place of pseudobulbs, and bear the flowers in erect panicles (clusters, as of grapes), singly at the nodes, or in drooping racemes (stems with flowers attached at intervals). Evergreen Dendrobiums may be accommodated in the warm house.

Deciduous Dendrobiums are peculiar-looking plants, becoming dry and shriveled bamboo-like canes each year after the leaves drop off. Amazingly, and lovelier by contrast, the flowers bud and bloom from the nodes (joints) of these dry canes.

Deciduous Dendrobes bloom on the old wood, and evergreen Dendrobes on the new growth. They may be accommodated in the warm house and removed to a cooler spot while resting.

Dendrobium, of sympodial growth, will put forth little plant-lets, complete with bulb and roots, at the slightest provocation.

These plantlets develop from the cane-like flower stems. If the beginner keeps his Dendrobiums, especially the deciduous type, too warm and moist during the dormant season they will waste their strength in plantlets and fail to bloom.

Many commercial growers pick the entire cane on flowering and, after cutting off the blooms, lay the canes on damp, warm sand or gravel to allow plantlets to develop from the dormant eyes. Dendrobiums are easily divided or grown from seed.

Dendrobium in many species lacks pseudobulbs, but even the long cane-like flower stems, along which the leaves grow in pairs, are capable of storing food and moisture.

Return to top