Category: tillandsia

A very interesting question that keeps getting asked is: ‘How do you preserve a ‘tight’ form for ionanthas like Apretado or Peanut or Hazelnut?

Weeeeeell.

First, let’s take a look at an example. This Hazelnut has been with me for about two years now; the left image was newly collected (and also newly imported, to my belief) and the right is after it’d moved to the plot.

I’ve lost the in-between pictures, but the closed form never stayed.

Why, you ask? Can you preserve that type of closed form?

Weeeeeell.

To my knowledge, it’s rather difficult to do so. Why, you ask?

The culprit is humidity. Singapore’s humidity, to be exact. I’m being country-specific because this may not apply if you’re in like, I dunno, Germany or something.

There’s a reason why some airplants come here and grow fast and big. Their natural environment has lesser humidity, which means lesser moisture they can suck up. Drier environments also mean they channel or close up to retain as much moisture as possible. Here, with the sheer amount of humidity (a quick glance at the humidity monitor in my room tells me the highest humidity I’ve achieved here is 92% while the lowest is 39% – while the airconditioning is turned on – and the average right now is 62%) here, the plant has no need to curl up and protect itself.

Furthermore, you know how you’d spread out a piece of cloth to get it to dry faster? Similarly, some closed form plants may open up because tight forms = water stays trapped in it longer = not ideal. Opening up means better circulation in the plant.

Therefore, it opens up. Moisture! Light! Growth! So-on and so-forth.

Can you stop it? Eh, well, if you can replicate the low humidity conditions I would say perhaaaaaps, but too tight a form can also create issues of their own given our nicely moist and rainy weather (November’s looking set to be No-Watering-November for me…).

I’ve seen some people wrap wires around the tip, but… eh, I’m not one for that. I mean, I’m not stopping you, but I’m also not going to be responsible if anything adverse happens.

On the topic of fertilizer, let’s talk about it for airplants!

Recently, someone mentioned to me that she’d heard one should not fertilize their airplants when they are spiking. I admit I was very confused because honestly, I’ve never heard of this. I mean, what’s the logic behind it?

Okay look.

Let’s talk what fertilizer does. As a person who keeps orchids and airplants and everything else in between (bromeliads, staghorns and other stuff), fertilizer is NOT FOOD. Think back to your secondary school biology (yes I know, return to teacher liao but try to recall yeah?), plants make their own food.

So can I grow an airplant without using fertilizer? ABSOLUTELY! (Hey, what do you think happens in the wild?) Some people do that, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s the same with orchids, you can grow it without fertilizer, just that uh, the flowering might be a little less vigorous.

If fertilizer isn’t food, then what is it for? Fertilizer is to plants, what supplements are to humans. Why do orchids produce more vigorous blooms when fertilized? Additional supplements make plants stronger and more vigorous. Even my colocasias produce enormous leaves and stems when fertilized.

So what exactly does fertilizing an airplant do, given that airplants only bloom once in their life?

Well, firstly, additional nutrients means a stronger plant. You know they tell you, drink milk for stronger bones, eat carrots for better eyesight, drink Vit C, etc? Same concept.

Unlike orchids, you can use weakly rather than weekly. A half dose (or less, depending on your watering regime) works, just as a supplement. But you should always make sure you have light, because the first rule of plant photosynthesis is that plants make food using carbon dioxide and sunlight.

Spike aborts? Not enough light.

Plant going dormant? Most likely not enough light; the food the plant makes isn’t enough to keep up with its own expenditure.

It’s kinda like weight loss in humans: if your calorie intake is greater than your calorie usage, you get fat. If your calorie intake is lower than your calorie usage, you lose weight because your body burns its existing reserves.

Can you up your fertilizer dosage? The answer is yes, but.

A working theory is that when you consistently fert a high dosage, the plant becomes acclimatised to that and once it shifts and gets lesser fertilizer, it goes to sleep.

I generally would only up my fertilizer dosage when the plant is spiking, and shifted to a very sunny spot. The reason for this is simple: spiking drains energy, by shifting to a sunnier spot and giving more supplements, I can help the plant boost its own reserves. If the plant doesn’t have enough energy during spiking, it aborts the spike, fert or no fert (been there, done that, I fertilized my Showtime aggressively during spiking but nope, it still aborted).

After spiking, I would continue the same regime, because it needs energy to grow pups. Remember, plants make their own food but supplements are also equally important. It’s the same as when a woman gets pregnant with children; you give her plenty of supplements and other good food when she’s pregnant and continue that AFTER she gives birth. Logical, amirite?

Ultimately, fertilizing choices are yours. I don’t really explicitly fertilize my plot plants; because the water I use is from a pond with fish (trace elements of ‘fertilizer’ already included, lol), but I do add some Gaviota 63 to my home plants when I water them weekly.

Now, an advertisement (that I don’t get paid for):

For those of you who are looking for good quality fertilizer, look no further! Gaviota contains all the necessary NPK and trace elements for your plant’s fertilizer needs.

Gaviota 63 (on Shopee)
Angro Official Store

Okay so after I typed the original title (Potential reasons for observed declines and/or stagnations in tillandsia kept in a high-rise setting), I realised it read too much like one of those scientific papers, so I ditched it. (You must understand, I was on a 3 day SHN because of a runny nose, I am unbelievably bored to the point I’ve started reading scientific journals… for fun.)

Something that has popped up and something that I constantly want to reinforce: if you live where I am, which is in sunny Singapore, and in one of our highly subsidised HDB flats, don’t go big. That huge-ass capitata orange? Put that down.

Why, you ask?

Here’s a question for you to ponder: how much sun do you get? A few hours? Will you get sun when the Earth shifts slightly on its axis?

Here’s a second question for you to ponder: do larger plants block circulation? What happens when that happens?

(P.S. Last question: What happens when they do block painting?)

I realised this conundrum when I attempted to keep two large xerographicas (that are no longer with me) at home, along with one exserta that alas, did not make it. What happened, you ask?

Well, for starters, I grow under lights. There is a limit to how much light I can provide, and trust me, the lights I use don’t even come close to full sun. As a plant gets bigger, it needs more light to sustain itself, and eventually, you will reach a stage where the lights don’t cut it.

Now, how does this factor into your HDB keeping?

Assuming you live in a North/South facing, you won’t be getting much direct sun. Bright light, maybe 10 hours, if you’re not blocked, and trust me, with the number of high-rises here, it’s easy to be blocked.

If you’re lucky to get an East/West facing unblocked area, you might get 4 – 6 hours of either morning sun or evening sun, but the bright light inbetween might be a challenge. You might, you might not.

Factor in Earth rotation issues (I get direct morning sun for only half the year, in my North-East facing house), and this means you might not get 365 days of that precious 6 hour sun.

As a plant grows, it needs more light to make food, to grow properly. Pay attention to your plant. When it’s small, it grows, quite remarkably. But as it gets larger, it will slow down. This is the same even for terrestrial plants, but to be fair my plants outside get the benefit of midday sun no matter what, whereas you don’t get that benefit if you live in a highrise. (Seriously, you have a ceiling above you, there isn’t much midday sun you can take advantage of).

As a plant grows, you’ll realise that some plants have leaves that stack tightly against each other. Bigger plant, more circulation. No circulation, you’ll have issues.

With small plants, it’s easy. It’s rather like filling a small jug. A small jug doesn’t take long to fill. A large jug however, takes longer to fill. But small plants grow, and as they do, they start to fill out, take up more space, require more light and circulation…

As they grow, you’d need to space them out a bit more, give bigger ones more space to grow. Un-ideally if you ignore them and leave them be, you’ll see issues like rot start to appear as airflow get restricted and things happen…

Guess what? It’s something that happens even at plot, though with plot we have a bit more leeway. Good circulation goes a long way (and we’ll explore more about circulation in a bit).

So, what do you do if your plants get too big?

Well, that’s another post for another day…

This began as a conversation with a friend, about how Spanish Moss or T. usneoides is utilised apparently as a fertiliser. This got me thinking: I’ve got several clumps of usneoides hanging on my Barbados Cherry plant outside and it’s grown spectacularly in the span of a year.

(So, said friend also mentions boiling Spanish Moss to make fertiliser, so make what you will of it. It is, after all, a tea in certain places…)

Anyway. I did some digging, because after all said friend has some very interesting points.

Turns out…

It’s all in Rosier et al (2015). It’s fascinating as heck (the paper, which is linked at the bottom). It fascinates me that apparently, there is an increase in certain minerals that drip into the soil. Of course, this study was done in America, but I suppose there’s still some truth to it here.

Is that why my cherry is growing so well?

At the risk of getting all scientific, look at the numbers!

Well, that is something to consider next time we grow plants. Perhaps draping a few strands of Spanish Moss will help them grow even better. Now, I’m off to throw Spanish Moss over my other plants!

Rosier, C. L., Van Stan, J. T., Moore, L. D., Schrom, J. O., Wu, T., Reichard, J. S., & Kan, J. (2015). Forest canopy structural controls over throughfall affect soil microbial community structure in an epiphyte‐laden maritime oak stand. Ecohydrology, 8(8), 1459-1470.

Recently, someone mentioned something that made me feel extremely puzzled: that channeling arose from a lack of light. Channeling is, in most cases, caused by dehydration. (In case you’re not familiar with the term channeling, you can find a definition of it here, along with pictures.)

So, channeling.

When your plant doesn’t get enough water, it has a tendency to channel. This is a defense mechanism of sorts to prevent water loss; some plants close their stomata (not that you can physically see this), others fold leaves, etc. Less surface area exposed means less water loss.

So channeling is simply a mechanism to protect itself from losing even more water.

Not all plants do this: certain airplant species naturally have leaves that look channeled (e.g. caputs and some of their hybrids, ehlersianas and their hybrids, duratiis, the list goes on). Some plants with extremely broad leaves (e.g. xerographicas or streptophyllas) don’t channel, but they curl up into a pumpkin. Even ionanthas won’t necessarily channel, they curl their leaves downwards to have a fountain look.

Then came the question: why are (in some cases) only the bottom leaves channeled? Some think it’s a low light issue. I beg to differ.

Meet my champion channeler. Chiapensis and their hybrids tend to be more suseptible to channeling, similarly to capitatas. This fellow is grown about… 10cm under my growlight, so there’s no way it’s because of a lack of light. The top leaves are channeling! What’s going on?

Fun fact: plants growing in lower light areas tend to have bigger, broader leaves so that they can absorb as much light as possible. Bigger surface area, larger space to suck up the little light they have. It’s diametrically opposed to the idea of curling up the leaf to lessen the surface area exposed. See the problem?

Re: bottom leaves channeling.

Here’s a question for you: if you stand under the shower, which part of your body will get thoroughly wet? (Hint: it’s your head).

Similarly, if you water a plant, chances are you’re watering from the top. The top doesn’t channel because loads of water cascading over it, but by the time it reaches the bottom, there’s less water since some have been caught by the top leaves, etc etc.

See this fellow? Lower leaves are channeled, upper leaves are fine. Plant gets morning sun for easily 5 hours.

Next: some channeling can be permanent. If you don’t water your plant enough to undo the channeling, sometimes the plant leaves can get stuck that way. That’s usually the case with the lower leaves, because they consistently don’t get as much water from the top as say, the top layer of leaves. Over time, this doesn’t get reversed, it’s a permanent fixture.

Happy growing!

This discovery came purely by accident; inspired in part by a friend’s discussion of dissecting an airplant (I use the term dissecting very loosely, the proper term might really be cleave in half) and how one of my T. Sweet Isabel’s survived after I cut her in half to salvage her from rot.

A quick recap: we’ve discussed saving plants from wet rot before. However, it hasn’t always been a success.

This time though, I might have found something that works perfectly, and has a much higher success rate… for very specific species, in this case, ionanthas. We’ll probably talk about methods for other caulescent species, but honestly, those are easy, just chop of all the problematic parts.

Ionanthas deteriorate extremely quickly when afflicted with rot.

The black gets into the stem, and then it’s game over even if you pluck off all the affected leaves.

If I were to leave this, it would inevitably rot. I’ve already removed affected leaves, but that doesn’t guarantee anything.

However…

What works: cutting away all rotting tissue until you see fresh green. Yes, you are going to need to cut into the plant and you’ll need a very sharp pair of scissors or even a penknife.

Cut. Once you’re done, overturn the plant and put it aside (you can skip the overturn, but put it aside nonetheless) to let the wound you’ve inflicted callouse over. Do not panic if you see the wound turning dark, I’ve noticed this on one of my operated on ions but that is simply the base healing.

Once the wound has completely healed, water as usual.

I’ve done this repeatedly as I thought the first time was a fluke. It apparently isn’t, but it only works for ions (for now, I haven’t found any other rotting plants to try this method on) and only in select situations, mostly when the rot starts from the bottom and spreads upwards. This also works as long as there’s healthy plant tissue; if the plant has rotted all the way through then it might be a little harder to save it.

It certainly beats the cinnamon powder method given the higher success rates.

Moral of the story? As with orchids, 敢敢砍!