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Beneath its delicate appearance, the orchid represents a fairly hardy tropical plant variety that can be grown at home. The only problem is that it can sometimes be difficult to get it to flower again if you don’t know the right tricks. Discover 10 simple and practical tips for keeping it at home.
Ideal for bringing a touch of lightness to your interior by purifying the air in your home, the orchid has been associated with a host of symbols over the centuries. From ancient Greece to Japan, via South America where it now serves as the national flower in Costa Rica, Venezuela or Colombia, it represents voluptuousness, eroticism, seduction and much more.
What does the orchid symbolise?
To understand what it represents, we must first look at its roots. And for good reason, those of the flower have long evoked anatomical curves, especially in ancient Greece, where they were associated with eroticism, fertility, virility and the female sex. On pensait d’ailleurs que leur consommation pouvait même avoir un impact sur la détermination sexuelle d’un bébé, explique Nathalie Chahine dans son ouvrage “Petit livre du langage des fleurs”, les grosses racines étant privilégiées pour avoir un garçon et les petites pour une hija.
The orchid family, which now includes more than 20 000 botanical species, has also been revered in Japan and China for its artistic and aesthetic values; Confucius associated its scent with that of friendship and its particular appearance with that of the accomplished man. In a more abstract way, it also represents a colour, the grace and fragility of a thing or a person, and finally, rarity and refinement. Not forgetting that it is one of the plants that bring positive energy to the house.
For these different reasons, many people consider it an ideal plant to decorate their interior, and rightly so, as it is an undeniable eye-catcher in a room. However, you have to know how to take care of it in the right way in order to grow it at home.
How to maintain an orchid?
In tropical forests or in the wild, orchids are found in wet meadows, dry limestone areas, in forests or on the edges of certain roads. In other words, there is also an epiphytic type of orchid, with aerial roots that do not need to be planted on terrestrial supports. The latter feed on the humidity of the ambient air and can grow on the branches of another plant, on rocks or even on trunks. However, the orchid can also be grown indoors in a pot.
While there are several varieties available, the most common is Phalaenopsis , a hybrid plant that blooms practically all year round. With thick, flat leaves, its flowers resemble the shape of a butterfly and are borne on long, upright stems. Depending on the species, they can take on various shapes and colours, giving an infinite number of options for those who choose to adopt them. Pink, mauve, purple or with white flowers, you will have several options to select the one that suits you best. Here is some good advice on how to take care of your orchid.
1) Use the right doses of water and fertiliser.
First of all, you need to feed your orchids if you want them to bloom again. This involves choosing a good potting soil and a liquid fertiliser to use every two weeks, the latter should be rich in nutrients such as potassium and phosphorus for optimal fertilisation. For this, you can ask a florist for advice. When the flowering period arrives, fertiliser is no longer necessary. You should also reduce the frequency of watering to give it a rest period.if the stem becomes brown and soft at the bottom, it may mean that it is rotting from too much stagnant water. You can then cut it as low as possible by resuming its classical maintenance to stimulate the growth of a new flowering stem.
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