I have a big dark brown liver spot bloom phal den bought 6months go. It had a glorious spike in full bloom when I brought it home, wonderful chocolaty flavor, with an abundance of vigorous strong as steel leaves and long wreaths of trailing roots.
After the spike was spent the plant started loosing most of its leaves. When the last two remained I knew I had to do something to save it. So I unspotted it completely and wasn’t surprised to see that most of if not all the roots had rotten. I trimmed them all off, left the plant covered in a plastic bag and on the following weekend went to my local night market and asked the seller to repot it for me. He kept it for two weeks and when returning it repotted he proudly pointed out a little bump at the base of one of the canes.
The bump grew to be a keiki and got me jumping up and down, “the darling is saved!” The keiki grew up fast enough sprouting new little white roots to secure itself to the mother plant. Then disaster struck: I dropped it when I was trying to hang it a little higher on my balcony (to shy from the afternoon sun). One of the two precious old leaves broke off along with a couple of the keiki’s new roots.
at the time of the fall the keiki had sprouted 4 leaves, the two youngest one are longer than the former two at the base (which were not fully developed). After the fall one baby root or two have darkened their tip, the others’ are still green. However it’s been at least a month now, nothing has grown any further or bigger, the two young leaves still cling together for dear life and would not separate. The plant has gone into a sleeping-beauty state. In orchid speak, I guess we would say it is sulking. My interpretation is that the hard fall has sent the poor thing into shock. No amount of coaxing “Sorry daddy dropped you on the floor, I promise I won’t ever do that again, ok?” would induce any signs of life. Meanwhile, the one remaining old leave is holding on for dear life, wobblingly. And black burnt rings have formed around the trunks of the old canes, I thing they are all dying….:
What shall I do know? And can anyone tell the id of my phal den?
Thanks