An unfortunate Dendrobium accident

[Orket]

Due to an unfortunate accident, I lost my favorite Dendrobium senile and the only thing I managed to recover is a broken off pseudobulb with no roots.

I placed the pseudobulb on a bed of sphagnum moss and attached it to a piece of driftwood with dental floss. Is there any chance it will grow?

What a sad day

[Orket]

Update:

I managed to retrieve the rest of the plant.
Half of it was badly damaged. There were still some roots remaining but the entire plant was very dehydrated.
I wrapped the remaining roots in sphagnum moss and reattached it to the mount.
Now I have two plants instead of one.

I hope they are not too badly shocked.

[JDT]

They should recover but it will not happen over night. Apply some kind of root hormone to spark new root growth, the quicker that starts to happen the better it will be!

[SouthPark]

What kind of accident? If you describe it, then it could possibly help others avoid such accidents.
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[Orket]

it involved a fall from height, gravity, and a sudden impact.

i wish i had some good news, but so far the plant(s) are just hanging along, they are not dead but there's no visible growth either
anyhow they are still green so i guess there's still hope

[SouthPark]

they are not dead but there's no visible growth either anyhow they are still green so i guess there's still hope

That sounds promising! If not dead and still green after a relatively long time, then there's definitely hope. Sounds like it's going to make it.

[Dorsetman]

This is a species which can survive on remarkably little water, so roots are not too important perhaps. I say that since I have seen it growing on a bare boulder, with not a scrap of moss, algae, lichen, anything , visible on the boulder, and no rootsextending over the surface either. And it was not even in a hollow : bit it looked good.
The best of luck with your save the orchid plan !

[Orket]

i did not update for a long time as the plants basically looked the way they were for months. the green parts remained green and the brown parts remained brown.

recently the mother plant (which had whatever was left of the roots attached) died. the pseudobulbs became mushy, and so i de-mounted it to reuse the mount (i had mounted it back on the original mount as i assumed it had more chance of survival).

the stem with leaves remained green all through. when i de-mounted it from the scrap wood in order to transfer it to the original mount... the stem had grown... a root. That piece previously had no root material attached at all, it was literally just a bit of broken pseudobulb with leaves, not even part of the base.

So somehow it "reprogrammed" the broken part of the pseudobulb into root material.

I know fast-rooting herbs such as basil can do that but I didn't know orchids could too.

That is seriously quite impressive.
So now we are back to one plant and it looks like it is back doing its thing

---------- Post Merged at 11:04 PM ----------

In case anyone is interested in the growing conditions for the surviving piece...

1) I mounted it on a piece of scrap aquarium driftwood with the plant on a bed of sphagnum moss. the moss covered the entire base of the stem (the part that doesn't have leaves), i held everything together with dental floss. I'm not sure if the use of driftwood is a contributing factor, but i understand it contributes to an acidic environment when used in aquariums. Anyhow, it was the only thing i had around.

2) i kept it out of the sun in a sheltered area and placed the entire plant and driftwood in one of those little plastic containers that supermarkets sell cherry tomatoes in. I kept it sheltered as i don't want the plant to lose water through the leaves when it has no roots to uptake water. the moss did not dry out at all during the entire period so i did not water it. i am not sure why it did not rot.

3) I didn't use any rooting hormones on the plant at all as I don't own any. Humidity here is typically very high in the >70% range and the temperature is warm (high 20s to low 30 degree celsius).

It took about a month before i spotted root nubs, so yes the process is very slow.

Now that the plant is growing, i will be moving it gradually out to full sunlight.

---------- Post Merged at 11:10 PM ----------

edit: i am told that my helpful family member secretly watered it, which is why it didn't dry out. LOL!