Last year in April I posted a couple pics to illustrate a new mount idea
for my brassavolas, and promised to follow up in a year. I had struggled
with these plants for many years and my collectiuon of brassavola
species had shrunken by several plants which had not survived my
conditions. I had planted them in tire crumbs, aliflor, coarse bark,
fine bark mix, in clay, plastic, and slotted pots. I had originally
tried them mounted, but my conditions were too dry and I was unable to
mist them often enough. Nothing worked well. So,once I had a greenhouse
built, one of the projects I turned to was experimenting with the
mounting of appropriate plants, including the brassavolas. I was looking
for some sort of mount which would hold a bit of moisture for a short
time and quickly dry. As I mulled this over, sitting on the back porch
petting the dogs, my eyes fell on a broken 16" clay pot sitting beside
the greenhouse door. It had held a large philodendron house plant before
breaking and had since been filled with the other, smaller broken clay
pots and pieces. It suddenly struck me that this was exactly what I had
been looking for. I mounted the brassavolas to pieces of cleaned,
disinfected broken terra cotta pots with wire and they get misted at
least once, and most often twice, a day, with the vandas and other
mounted plants. I have also moved some tillandsia bromeliads onto such
mounts.

Here are two pics of the results a year later. The nodosa has bloomed
before, twice in ten years, with a maximum of three flowers. The
perrinii has bloomed also twice in ten years.

The perrinii also shows the only negative I've discovered about this
system: last week when the plant came back from a show I accidentally
smacked it against the car door edge and broke the potsherd to which it
is mounted so I will have to replace it.

The other brassavolas are prospering also on these mounts and have shown
extensive new root growth; I expect blooms as soon as they build up
their strength.

Other mounted plants (laelias, cattleyas, etc.) are on treefern plaques,
cork, or cedar shingle, and doo well on the appropriate mount. The
tillansdias have done exceptionally well too.