New Plants in Spongelike Material

Received five new plants. One of the plants came loose during shipping and fell out of pot so i had the opportunity to check out the roots. there were some new roots above a sponge like medium that had older embedded roots. These roots were mushy and thready, ie. no velamen. I wrote her and she responded, "The foam is the material from the plug trays. These come out of the flask and into the trays. When the new roots, the plump green ones you see, emerge, they are moved from the trays to pots and grown on there. The 'baby' roots from inside the foam, and the foam itself is left on as anchor material as well as to provide extra moisture around the new emerging roots.
Just the normal growth pattern. As you can see, the plant is very healthy." should i unpot all and repot with medium I can handle? that spongelike material will stay too wet for me. Also the plant in question, Odtna. Susan Bogdanow 'Purple Rain' B/S, has some very light yellow molting to the leaves. Is this normal? thanks all.

Yes. When in doubt repot to something media that you know how to properly water. I've rotted a few and found pieces of rockwool or spag in the center--disappointing.

The Susan Bogdanow probably was grown in higher light than it needed. It's fairly normal. If you want to make sure..post a picture of it for us.

I am going to work on the pics. I have tried to post after resizing and it says they are still too large. Will figure it out. I am researching the five orchids i received yesterday, i am so impatient but don't want to mess with them too much. I have repotted two. The second (wils. golden auntie) has much healthier roots (no sponge) but are much smaller than my catts. I might have to repot these two (susan and auntie) with finer medium. What do you think? Will repot the rest tomorrow when i get better medium and smaller pots. Can't wait to get a better look at them. thanks for your feedback.

If your images are not the correct size, you can download the Image Resizer for windows.

Read the instruction for the image resizer on this page.

Cheers,
BD

I have received plants like this, in that spongy stuff (I think we all have) and we do our best to remove it all before we repot into our normal media. Its nasty, but not unusual - but do put it into your own media and perhaps keep it out of direct sun for 4 days or so, just to give it some time to reestablish itself - that might help lessen the stress.

One "rule of thumb" for size of medium used in repotting- finer roots, finer medium. Thicker roots, larger medium. Does that help any?

thanks all! keeping my fingers crossed! I have definitely been bitten by the orchid bug and definitely have little patience. Guess i need to distract myself more rather than just stare at them all day!

It never ceases to amaze me how some like neglect....too much fussing with some just makes them die faster!
Connie