Can an orchid treated with paclobutrazol still bloom if the plant does not grow taller?
All things grow according to their own laws, so why involve drugs in their life! Gibberellin promotes growth! Paclobutrazol suppresses height! Whether promoting growth or suppressing height, the original intention of cultivating orchids has already changed! Orchids artificially plumped up by drugs have violated their natural growth laws! What meaning of orchid cultivation is there left to seek!
The orchid's pseudobulb’’ is where it stores nutrients, and it is also the central hub for the entire plant's physiological metabolic system, nutrient conversion, processing and regulation. Therefore, under natural growth conditions, only orchid plants with naturally formed, plump pseudobulbs obtained through human management can be called strong seedlings. Strong seedling plants are easy to manage, produce new growths, bloom normally and grow roots. They are also strong in disease resistance.
But artificially suppressing height with paclobutrazol, this drug-forced method that makes orchids change their natural height-growth law, stop growing upward and increase lateral growth, prompting the orchid plant to become dwarfed so as to achieve plump pseudobulbs, will only make the orchid's root system short, thick and hollow!
This kind of drug-forced plumping of pseudobulbs, artificially faked strong-seedling drug plants, brings endless follow-up problems: difficult to cultivate, the drug plants rebound, disease resistance becomes weaker, the recovery cycle is very long……
In this kind of drug-forced fattened plant, the pseudobulb is in an internally hollow state and does not have the abundant nutrient foundation of a true strong seedling. Although flower bud differentiation also occurs, it is obviously weak and smaller than the flower buds produced by strong seedlings! Flower scape elongation and the orchid's bloom quality are both affected! For example, in lotus-petal orchid varieties: the petals of strong seedlings are 7~10 petals, while those of weak drug plants are only 5 petals, etc.