I noticed some of my paphs have furry roots and some have smoothe roots. I think the furry ones are healthier.
If so, what can I do to make the smooth ones get furry?

The fresh new roots are smooth and they get furry as they age.

The fresh new roots are smooth and they get furry as they age.

ditto....I'm glad I am learning something and it is sticking :shock:

Man you beat me to it! Good growing getting roots! Major victory in my camp!

The primary roots are more hairy,because they are typically fungal formations of pelotons. As the plant becomes stronger, it no longer needs the fungus, and so the hairs do not form. So if you have a plant that has lots and lots of hair on every root, this indicated that the plant is not strong enough to survive without using the fungus.

Very interesting. Thanks for the info everyone.

I need to correct this. The hair may not be from fungus, it could be a natural growth of the roots. This requires more study on my part, my apologies for speaking before I understood. However, there is one thing in common in plants that can have hair or not: Stress. The plant will create hairs because of stress. Water stress to be specific, in order to increase surface area. So you could have a healthy plant that gets a slight amount of stress and produces hairs to seek out water for when the media dries up. Or you could have a plant desperately looking for water, sending out tons of roots. Or you could have a healthy plant with smooth small roots, because it has all the water it needs to support itself.

Steve - saw your questions on OGD - happy to see them, and looking forward to seeing responses that can be shared here, unless, if as usual, responses turn into a mess of a flame war. :roll:

I am rather doubtful we are going to get some good discussion going, but perhaps if the pseudotaxonomists keep out and the pseudoscientists chime in, we'll start getting some good ideas.

And who the hell turned off UBB Code?
http://us.st5.yimg.com/store1.yimg.com/I/demotivators_1849_12774943

http://us.st5.yimg.com/store1.yimg.com/I/demotivators_1849_12774943

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y134/ahmcd33/7e0fbe72.jpg

Ok Steve- so, I messed around w/ this a bit to see if I could figure out what is going on. I think it is because your link does not end in .jpg, .gif, etc. That it isn't able to figure it out and post the image directly. Could be wrong, but that's my guess. BB code *is* on though, or I'd not have been able to post my photo.

Heather, there are a few more open spaces for some new plants....see what you can do to fill them up :poke: