Monday, August 30, 2010

Undifferentiated spikes can be influenced by temperature to produce keikis


Recently I increased the minimum temperature in the greenhouse from 18°C to 23°C to encourage new vegetative growth on my Phalaenopsis plants that I had used for cloning. Three plants remained with very early spikes that had been too young to cut for cloning. Two of these were still undifferentiated and the other was slightly longer with the beginnings of flower bud differentiation. The latter continued to grow in length normally with reproductive growth while the other two began to produce vegetative growth. It is well documented that vegetative growth in Phalaenopsis plants is triggered at around 26°C but it may be possible that the plant spikes when still very young and undifferentiated are influenced to produce vegetative growth when the temperature differential is reduced by increasing the minimum temperature. So, I can anticipate two additional plants… I intend to leave one of these on the mother plant to increase its size as a specimen plant. The other one I will remove when it is large enough and will pot it up.

1 comment:

  1. Hey Dave, It is awesome to see how temperature effect things. Not just plants. We learn things every day that helps us in our knowledge to improve things and grow within ourselves! What your doing will help others to do better what they did wrong or weren't sure how or what. In what your doing will help someone out there! Looking forward to the next chapter!

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