Speckles Weak? Phals

[oregon woodsmoke]

I am wondering if the speckled phals are weaker?

I've purchased two different speckled (freckled) phals from different sources and neither one kept the flowers for much more than a week.

I bought my very first phals on Feb 20 this year. The plain ordinary pink one still has flowers. The other one, a harlequin, had flowers for along time. My newer purchases kept flowers well. Not like my pink one, but for a nice long show-off time.

It's just the two speckled ones that dropped their flowers quickly.

Fortunately, the plants themselves look happy.

Not quite off topic: my favorite iris is a reverse placata with a purple background and white spots. It is notoriously weak and the varieties bred from it are weak. That is why I am wondering if there is a genetic link between color and robustness in the phals.

[SouthPark]

Originally Posted by oregon woodsmoke

It's just the two speckled ones that dropped their flowers quickly.

Not sure OW. I only have one phal ----- not speckled. But ..... I have seen in Home Depot type nursery sections spotted type phals in there, with flowers lasting for quite a while - pretty sure lasting more than a week.

Hard to say right now ----- there are so many orchids out there, and some have their own behaviours, and could also depend on whether you grow all of the orchids in the same way, and also maybe even on their original state (health) - as in, if you have two different orchids ....... then hard to say what original health state they were in to begin with, which then also leads to considerations about fertilising, mag-cal, any insect activity going on, and what the growing conditions/environment is, and whether there were any abrupt changes to the growing conditions.

I expect phal flowers to last much much more than 1 week.