Name:	Phalaenopsis (unnamed)	Seed parent:	unknown
Date acquired:	August 2000	Pollen parent:	unknown
Source:	Colonial Gardens (Evansville, IN)	Season:	Fall
Container:	none (deceased)	Climate:	Intermediate

December 2000

I've probably owned a dozen and a half orchids, and I've currently got dozens living on my windowsills.  As it turns out, they do make for decent houseplants.  The one most important thing that I've learned about them over the years is not to buy them from anyone but specialty orchid dealers.  All those cute plants in the grocery store or hardware store (!) might look wonderful now, but most of them have been badly abused and their roots are half rotten.  This is a sure recipe for disappointment; even with the best care, they only get sicker and sicker as time passes.  This decline I finally convinced myself wasn't due to my thumb being black.  Pull a plant out of the pot at the store sometime and you'll see what I mean.  Of course, if you can find one in a brand new shipment, before the store lackeys get their hands on them, more power to you.

One of the early orchids I got was an unnamed Phalaenopsis from a greenhouse down in Evansville.  I did manage to flower it my senior year at Rose; here are a couple pictures of it.  It opened three flowers and kept them open for several months.  After those couple months were up, it keeled over.  I went to repot it after it had finished flowering and realized that it had essentially no intact roots left.  That certainly wasn't the result of my sparse watering, which means that the damage was done before I got the plant.

Click on the thumbnails to view detailed images.