poor root health
While watering my orchids the other day, I accidentally jostled my old oncidium NOID, and the plant fell completely out of its pot. This exposed the rather pitiful current state of its roots, which is quite worse than what I had hoped. Aside from the one longish root at the upper left of the picture, the plant's only living roots are the new growing tips. Although the oncidium has been sprouting roots continuously for the last 2 months, they haven't been surviving. I trimmed back a few rotten dead roots (long root on bottom right).
The lack of roots and the ease with which the orchid tipped out of its pot both indicate that I had originally placed it in way too large of a pot. To correct the situation, I searched for the shallowest pot I owned that would still be wide enough at the top to fit the oncidium's pseudobulbs. The smaller new pot allows the plant to be more stable, and the smaller volume of media will be able to dry out faster. Both of these changes should help improve the orchid's root health
comparison: oncidium in new, much smaller pot
Since the pseudobulbs still have much more thickness than the ones on the oncidium 'the rescue' NOID I am not at this point worried about losing this orchid. However I am disappointed that my 'NOID isn't farther along in its recovery. I really hope the smaller pot helps, but the timeline before I can hope to see my favorite old orchid bloom again seems even longer now.
EDIT 3/29: Identified as Wilsonara Pacific Perspective!
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