Terminal Spike on a 2+ Yr Old Phal?

[Fishkeeper]

You could always get some keiki paste, and try to encourage it to produce a keiki from the spike.

[Mountaineer370]

Congratulations on growing such a beautiful Phalaenopsis! Whatever you're doing, just keep doing it. It may produce a keiki, or it may produce a basal growth. But I think you will eventually need a bigger pot! It certainly looks huge already, but photos can be deceiving. Any idea what the leaf span is?

[Zeus]

Originally Posted by Mountaineer370

Congratulations on growing such a beautiful Phalaenopsis! Whatever you're doing, just keep doing it. It may produce a keiki, or it may produce a basal growth. But I think you will eventually need a bigger pot! It certainly looks huge already, but photos can be deceiving. Any idea what the leaf span is?

Thank you! It is really an example of beginner’s luck, combined with semi-obsessive research in the early days - for convenience, I fell into a watering schedule whenever the tray she was on dried completely and I think it just happened to be the right cadence. I was planning to repot this Spring but then the spike appeared, so I might wait until the Fall or Winter.

I don’t really know how to measure her size, but she’s about 28” or so leaf tip to leaf tip and about the same height-wise including the peak of the flower spike. Pic attached - around 6 layers of leaves? I also think the breadth of her flowers are bigger this time around, unless I’m imagining it - they just LOOK bigger side-side and top-bottom.

Without a doubt, though, she’s at least 5x bigger than the cute, puny little thing our real estate agent bought at TJ’s. Then, she had a little spike with just 2 flowers and a leaf or two.

[Mountaineer370]

Thanks! Yes, that's what I meant by leaf span is just holding up a ruler (or in your case, a yardstick!) next to the plant and measuring the distance between the longest leaf tips. Twenty-eight inches, wow! I grow nothing but Phals, and I have a few that are five or six years old, and my largest ones are still only around fourteen to sixteen inches across. (I'm not complaining; in my case, that's probably a good thing.)

In the latest picture you posted, it looks like there is at least one leaf growing from the terminal spike. Maybe you have a keiki starting.

[Zeus]

Originally Posted by Mountaineer370

Thanks! Yes, that's what I meant by leaf span is just holding up a ruler (or in your case, a yardstick!) next to the plant and measuring the distance between the longest leaf tips. Twenty-eight inches, wow! I grow nothing but Phals, and I have a few that are five or six years old, and my largest ones are still only around fourteen to sixteen inches across. (I'm not complaining; in my case, that's probably a good thing.)

In the latest picture you posted, it looks like there is at least one leaf growing from the terminal spike. Maybe you have a keiki starting.

I hope so! The one I have is clearly a good specimen that just loves New Mexico sunlight.

You’re right - this weird spike thing started with a little healthy leaf and grew from there.

[Zeus]

Hi, everyone - just wanted to follow up with all of the folks that were kind enough to respond to my earlier post.

My crazy, monster Phal indeed decided to put out a new spike below her top leaves (pic attached), even though she’d already done so in the early summer. You were all CORRECT. Super healthy and, hopefully, will continue.

We joked that this was nothing more than competition, since I’ve recently brought a white-blooming Phal into the house as a companion. Apologies for the anthropomorphizing