Remounting Tolumnia Red Berry

Tolumnia Red Berry

     Tolumnia Red Berry was my very first orchid mount.  I used a piece of driftwood that had been sold as 'aquarium decor'.  In 7 months since, the mount has started significantly decomposing.  

Closeup of decomposing mount

     The wood is now covered in algae and fungal growths.  It even grew an actualy mushroom from the bottom! (I wish I had thought to snap a picture of that before I snapped it off).  My other mounts are from a different, harder wood, and don't have anything more than a small amount of algae covering them.  Since I had an unused mount from when my now dead Den. victoriae-reginae, I decided to transfer my Tolumnia Red Berry over before its root growth made remounting more difficult.

New growth on Tolumnia Red Berry

     Peeling the orchid from its old pot was still quite easy; the new roots had not yet worked their way into the wood.  In the process, I discovered a new growth that was hiding at the back of the plant.

Freshly remounted Tolumnia

     The Tolumnia is now growing on a grapewood mount, which should hopefully fare better.  It's not as ascetically pleasing as the old mount, but the new mount is more space efficient, since I can hang it off the side of the shelves.