Blc Maikai X Blc Goldentang

This is one of the really fun plants in my collection. The bloom color changes dramatically over a three week period. The plant is a consistent bloomer and will be in bloom most of the fall. This plant was a gift back in 1998. Purchased originally for the center piece for a dinner party, it became my baby when the blooms faded.

I re-potted it back in 2003, into the basket shown in the photo below. I lined the basket with a light weight landscape fabric and used an inorganic mix of aliflor, sponge rock and horticultural charcoal. Using an inorganic mix allowed be to grow the plant undisturbed for nearly  10 years. The landscape fabric holds the potting mix in the basket as well as keeping the roots from attaching to the wood slats.

I had this plant on the plant table about 3 and 1/2 years ago, a night when Greg Allikas was our guest speaker. During the plant table discussion he made the suggestion that I get this plant out of it’s basket. Well I finally got around to it. The basket was breaking down, so I removed all the corner pins, and easily removed the plant. Since root mass was well contained inside the landscape fabric it only took a brief soak, to release the roots from the fabric and the all the old media was easily washed off.

I was able to take off several divisions. The main chunk of plant is now wired to a 30″ section of tree fern log. The divisions were potted into tree fern pots I made from a tree fern log that I divided into sections then hollowed out the center.

The divisions are happily growing roots and new pseudo-bulbs and will probably bloom this coming fall.  To secure the divisions, since plant clips aren’t really an option in a tree fern pot, I use 22 ga wire and protect the rhizome with a chuck of charcoal.