tropical plants

My yard today

Inside the bags: a reverted pink princess
philodendron and a hopefully recovering
A. Micholiziana var. "Frydek"

Terrarium, normally 70-90% humidity

Humidity Hope 12-07-25

Winter hit hard and early this year, and my yard has looked like the photo for a couple of weeks now. I'm only surprised because it isn't the norm anymore, most years were still having temps of 40-50F, which shouldn't be the norm but it is. With the drop in outside temps comes the drastic loss of humidity in my house which is normally combated via the use of a humidifier attached to the furnace and two warm mist humidfiers near the bulk of my plants. The one attached to the furnace doesn't do much to the point I've wondered if it even works when I see my little weather station in the kitchen read 14% humidity in the house. This year however, I found out that it does.

It broke down this year, the sponge things that go on the big rotating drum had worn out and there was so much mineral accumulation in the bottom tray of water that it could barely turn. For the first time ever I saw my weather station read 8% humidity. I have to wonder a bit if my breathing was the source. Also not helping was that my older warm mist humidifier broke, there was a weird white bubbly ooze coming out of the heating element thing in the bottom, so I had to buy a new one. That room, my tropical room I guess I'll call it, normally gets up to 70% during the day while the humidifiers are running, but this year while the furnace one has been down, max has been 60% and I've seen it as low as 40% with night humidty in the 30s. I lost a few plants to dry rot when this started, as the normal signals that tell me it's time to water apparently this year meant it was already too late. I learned that I really needed to stay on top of it; one day everything would look fine, the next like half my collection was bone dry and wilted.

Funnily enough, some of my plants that I consider to be more finicky in general don't seem to care that much, like the Alocasia Black Velvet you can see in the second photo, or my black begonia, another velvet leaved plant. I've been covering my neediest plants with plastic bags at night, and that seems to help a lot. The pink princess (which is now just a princess) has always kind of irked me because I felt like there should've been some kind of warning tag on it when I bought it that said something along the lines of will have fits if humidy drops below 90% at any time. Because of this, it's always kind of looked like crap due to humidity issues and it's too big to put in my terrarium. I've been misting the emerging leaves before I cover it at night, something I'd normally be wary of for risk of mold, and that seems to be helping as well, though the newest one did have a tip that just crumbled to dust in my hand.

Even my terrarium has been drying out faster than ususal. Instead of it's usual 70-90% range, it's been 60-80, and I have to water that much more frequently as well despite having taped up as many gaps as I can. Luckily the Ceropegia and Spanish moss are the only things starting to look out of sorts. I didn't get cuttings of garden annuals in time before the winter hit this year to start up my second one, and I'm kind of glad I don't have that extra maintenance this year.

It's not all bad though, today the furnace humidfier was fixed and the weather station in my kitchen has bounced up to a balmy 18% so far. Hopefully once it's been running for a while, and the 175yr old bones of my house stop sucking up moisture like it's some kind of wood lotion, my tropical room will be able to get to my target of 70%, maybe I'll even get to turn one from high to low if it goes over. I've been able to save corms from the 2 alocasias that got dry rot ( a baginda and a bisma which have thicker leaves that hold more water (?)) and have been trying to start them with info I found online. I'm trying 2 different methods, sphagnum and perlite, and am just beginning to see little roots sprout from a few of them. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Just after repotting

Orchids again 11-28-25

Orchids again. I used to keep them, at least 25, all kinds of different species. I used to go to orchid shows. The really large one was in Detroit, but the people there were so rude. Not the vendors, the antendees. Mostly older women who would literally push me out the way to get to a vendor table like the plant they wanted was on fire, then they wouldn't buy anything and would walk away. They just had to look before anyone else. It happened at several booths all the years I went, maybe it's just big city culture. It drove me crazy and I hated it even though I would usually come home with one or two nice plants that I couldn't get anywhere else. I started going to smaller shows in smaller cities; the selection was never as good, but still some nice plants. I was so proud of my collection.

I had it figured out, when to water, and which ones couldn't take our hard water. Usually I found that the thinner the roots were, the less likely they were to tolerate it. I had the 10 degree drop in nighttime temps down, and I had the fertilizer down. I'm not a super expert, Miltonias and Cymbidiums just refused to live for me and I could never get paphs to bloom, but everything else did great. At one point I had so many blooming at once that I clustered them all on a table and took a picture with my first smart phone. It didn't transfer with the data to my next one. After some years, I went through an extremely difficult time with my mental health. I've dealt with it for years and it's normally medium with severe spikes, but this was crippling. I couldn't take care of them; I couldn't take care of myself. They all died.

I feel really bad about it for several reasons. One, they were living things that were happy. Two, I wasted a lot of money letting them die. Three, I lost something that I really loved and that was a rare source of pride for me. Sometimes people would ask me how to care for them and it made me feel slightly more necessary on this planet. Plants I grew from starters into monstrous bloom machines, all gone. I miss my Zygolum the most. It might sound overly-dramatic, but I kept them for so long, I feel like part of me is gone with them. Part of me wants orchids again, but part of me is afraid that it could all happen again at any time.

Years have passed since that and I don't go to orchid shows anymore. All I ever see at even dedicated plant shops in my area are Phalaenopsis with the same flower form. While a large white flowered phal is really beautiful, I'm just not sure it's worth it...just in case. Then last weekend, I was out of town in a Lowe's and came across a Brassivola nodosa, (aka queen/lady of night orchid). This was something I had wanted from the very beginning after seeing photos of it in one of my books. It has a really unique flower form and supposedly fills whole rooms with its floral/lemony scent beginning at dusk.

In all the years I went, I only ever saw one in person sitting behind a vendor. When I asked him if it was for sale, he said no. Now here at Lowe's of all places, was this orchid I'd been after for so long, but should I get it? What if it dies? I'm supposed to be better now, I started keeping other types of houseplants and don't have the same fear about them. Logically, orchids should bring me joy, not this emotional conundrum. I picked it up. Then as I looked over, I saw 3 more non-phalaenopsis orchids, one a splash petal Cattleya, another some really interesting looking cat hybrid. I grabbed the latter, too.

I carefully removed all the platic, card, rubber band and netting around the pots and had a good look at their roots and medium. I kind of wanted them to look bad, but they didn't, they looked dry but healthy. So I bought them.

Today I repotted the nodosa. I noticed that the grower's tag said it's the cultivar little stars. It'll have smaller, but more numerous flowers and I'm fine with that. The substrate it came with was great, but there was styrofoam in the bottom of the pot I wanted to remove, plus I wanted to check for a strangler. That's what I call those evil dryer sheet-like material things that companies start plants in and then leave on in what I'm entirely convinced is an attempt to slowly kill the plant so you'll buy a new one and give them more money. It didn't have one of those, but buried in the middle of the root ball was a large wad of sphagnum moss--better than a strangler but it's going to hold a lot of water right near the heart of the plant, potentially causing rot while all the other roots would dry quickly.

I violenced the root ball a little more than I wanted to in order to get the moss out. I reused the substrate since it was fine and added a bit of my own to make up the difference. I wasn't able to get it in all the gaps I'd made trying to get at the moss. I soaked in distilled, and added an ounce of diluted fertilizer. I hope it lives and I hope it blooms.