Sacoila lanceolata - Scarlet Ladies Tresses

Sacoila lanceolata is one of our most interesting orchids because it is not very commonly part of orchid collections and it's a FL native. We rescued it from a construction site. They have really cool roots like fingers. Since they are native to Florida they like the typical Florida rainy and dry season watering schedule. They should get only minimal water from November until May- just enough to keep it from being totally dry. This is the sort of thing you can probably ignore a lot during the winter and water it when you think of it. If you don't live in Florida though, during the summer it will want tons of water because it rains here everyday from May/June until mid October. It flowers in March/April when there are no leaves on the plant. It just starts sending up a spike. After the flowering spike dies off it will start putting on new leaves. The leaves will fall off every year (after looking junky and yellow for a while) in the fall/winter. We grow it in sand (there's no topsoil really in FL) with a little potting soil mixed in. We put Osmocote on it occassionally. It pretty much wants full sun or as much as you can give it. It can withstand freezing temperatures because it does get that cold sometimes in FL, but it can't handle it as well in a pot so it needs some protection from cold weather if it is going to be below freezing for an extended period of time. Obviously it will need to be indoors if growing up north.  This was a complete experiment because we had never grown one of these or even really heard of anyone growing them before, so we just replicated natural FL conditions as best we could in a 3 gallon pot. The roots don't seem to really expand in a major way super quickly so it doesn't seem like it will need to be repotted often. It's really more like a potted plant than a typical orchid in terms of growing because it is terrestrial.