It's a freaking miracle....
.....but it looks like Gemma is actually going to make it. For the last month, I have watched this poor orchid, whose only crime was to catch my eye with her fabulous flowers, slowly but surely decline with one stressor after another.
Gemma was one of the orchids that I bought in sphagnum moss and transferred to bark for about a month before I repotted all my orchids into leca. On top of all this, she got sunburned from the lights she was under! She only had a nubbin of an aerial root left after the Final Repot and I really didn't have much hope for her.
But here she is, trucking on even now! She has two brand new roots tips growing in strong and now that she is at a more appropriate distance from the grow light, she should be just fine. Talk about a hardy plant! It's going to be exciting to watch her adapt and establish herself. I don't know why but I find her tiny little flowers so endearing and striking with the dark red lip against the pale pink petals. She has no fragrance but when it comes to this little beauty, I don't mind.
The Baby blues are gone for good.....
.....if this picture is any indication for Baby Blue! Her keiki, which is actually not a basal keiki but one on the end of a tiny cut flower spike. That was quite the discovery when she lost the leaf hiding this part of the keiki.
Baby Blue has lost quite a few leaves, the most of all of my phalaenopsis at this point which had me very worried. But under those yellowed leaves were these roots! The keiki is currently growing in four active new roots which is an explosion of activity compared to the mother plant who has been rotting her roots up until now. The mother plant has lost two leaves, one more is about to drop and yet another is starting to yellow a bit.
I really hope the mother plant pulls through and starts putting out a few roots of her own so she can rehydrate those limp leaves. The signs are promising and I have high hopes she will survive, at the very least through the keiki.