How to promote new growth on orchids – getting multiple leads on Cattleya orchids
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I don’t know about you but I would really like to have an orchid with multiple leads. This means multiple flower spikes, who doesn’t want that? An orchid can naturally obtain this with age, maybe genetics plays a role too, but maybe we can also induce multiple growths on orchids.
Dividing orchids forces dormant eyes to develop into new growth. Each time an orchid is divided, it is forced to find a way and grow. Using this information I thought I could create a dividing effect without actually repotting the orchid.
This will only work on sympodial orchids, so Phalaenopsis, vandas and others might not be suited. Also some species might not be suited for this either. So I chose an easy and hardy orchid to experiment with, a Cattleya hybrid.
What I did was to find a suitable place to cut the rhizome. I looked for divisions that had dormant eyes. Even if they are not visible, they are there. Each pseudobulb can have 2-4 available eyes, so look for healthy old bulbs that only have one direction of growth, this means they can start developing in a second direction as well.
This is an experiment, so don’t go chop your orchids just yet, first let’s see how this one does.
