NOID Vanda hybrid
About three years ago my wife was shopping at her favorite grocery store. They have a lot of orchids for sale in their flower section, but every once in awhile they put some other places in the store to catch the impulse shopper.

She got the Vanda as a gift for me and was all happy about it. The plant was in a terracotta pot and sealed in a stapled plastic wrap. The bark in the pot looked brand new. There were buds but they were brown spotted from moisture.

I got the plant out of the wrap and out of the pot. At one time it had had some nice roots but now it had almost none. It was in a tiny plastic basket that had been jammed into the pot and bark poured on top.

This picture was taken 3 months later. I had wired it in place in a larger basket and had put it outdoors in good light. It was watered twice daily and started to grow new roots almost right away.

3 years later

By Vanda standards, the root system is pretty small, but each year the new roots have got thicker. It has been in good Vanda conditions where vandaceous orchids are blooming. Just today I noticed a spike. I know not to get too excited yet. A small spike is a long way from flowers, but it shows progress. (Put your mouse over the picture to see the spike.)

The main lesson with this plant is patience. Sometimes a rescue plant will bloom the next year, but often it takes much longer than that.