Orchid Growing Substrates

e harvested any longer. It is important to remember that first, there are different species
and second there are different areas where the same species grow. In some areas, one
species can make one type of growth, but in a warmer place, the cell walls, and general plant
chemistry and metabolism will be different. Not only must the natural resource be harvested
of the proper species, but from the proper place as well. Tasmania at a point did produce for
a short while sphagnum, however the capacities were much lower than New Zealand in terms
of areas that could be harvested sustainably. Xavier was very surprised when he visited New
Zealand to find out that the sphagnum is not harvested from very old bogs, like people used
to see in Europe or North America, but from fields that had been pastured until quite
recently, or decades old cleared forests and bushes. In fact in New Zealand, the sphagnum
comes from artificially managed lands, nearly all the time, not from a natural ecosystem that
is poached. Sphagnum is harvested every 4 to 7 years, depending on the location, and it
comes from places that were cultivated before for various agriculture or pasture purposes.
The two most important species are sphagnum cristatum, the big head type, and sphagnum
subnitens, a smaller variety. However it is interesting to note that nearly all the time they
grow together, except in a few places, and it can be troublesome to make a ‘pure’ batch of
one or the other species.
Chile Sphagnum.
o
Later, Chile sphagnum moss started to become an alternative. First, Chile traders claimed that
it was the same as New Zealand. It appeared from the early growers trials that it looked a bit
the same, though it had the reddish color typical of Sphagnum magellanicum, but soon some
growers in Japan and the USA found out that some species would simply refuse to grow good
root system in the Chile sphagnum vs. New Zealand sphagnum moss, in their conditions.
Some years later, it has been made clear that those are different species. It is absolutely not a
renewable resource, and nowadays it becomes scarcer, despite a very low, attractive price.
The bogs are cleared one after each other, and now most of the stock comes from the south,
and further south in Chile, at increased transportation expenses. The quality suffers especially
in recent years, as it is required for the Chilean exporters to harvest lower quality, or
previously discarded bogs. It does not renew, in the way that the orders are so huge that
everything is really cleared. It is interesting to note too that it grows in areas with quite high
water salinity.
Chinese Sphagnum.
o
China is a very old, newcomer. They harvested Sphagnum for their own culture for ages, at
least 150 years, if not more. There are growers that get absolutely amazing results in China
with their local sphagnum moss, unfortunately there are many species, and as previously said,
Xavier Garreau de Loubresse
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