Leaf on mini phal spike

[mandirose1]

Do tell! What is this doing on the spike? I thought maybe it was a keiki, but I'm not so sure. It's coming out of the first node. The bit at the top is where the spike was broken. (And someone clipped the flowers back to it! WTH? I got it for $4 because of it though!)

[lotis146]

Now that I've heard a bit more about the plant I really can't say. Was the leaf there prior to the spike being cut? As I said in the other thread you posted this picture in, some Phals do produce adventitious leaves on spike nodes but I think we'd have to see this a bit more clearly and from a couple different angles to give you any better of a diagnosis.

[mandirose1]

I'm not sure if the leaf was there before the spike bit the dust, but probably. I bought it today and the flowers were crazy wilted so I thought I'd ask for a discount and they gave me half off. I figured why not!
I went to repot it as soon as I got home because the flowers looked like crap anyway, and when I took the clip off that was holding the spike to a bamboo rod the spike just fell off at the point at the top.

[lotis146]

Wow, very interesting. I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking at before but now I see that there is actually a rather large leaf at the bottom of the spike, it's not just the green at the top. Don't know what I thought I was looking at before.

HMmm...I'm not familiar with basal keikis (you may want to look up some pictures of them) though I have several keikis that have grown further up the spike and they didn't look like that. And the plants that I've seen with leaves growing off spike nodes weren't all that big. So from my little experience I really am not too sure. Could be a basal keiki that decided it actually wanted to be a spike...?

Someone else will jump in here eventually and share their two cents and/or experience. In the meantime I would just enjoy the experiment and see what happens with it, should be fun.

[mandirose1]

Yeah, I'm stoked I got it for so cheap!

Thanks!

[lotis146]

Oh gosh I forgot all about this other thread but you should check it out it's "What's this Phalaenopsis doing". Similar to your case.

[jai_star]

Some spikes do very interesting things. I have this Phal at the moment which has two spikes the one on the right I have absolutley no idea if it will become flowers or a keiki . What a strange world..

[Raqsharqi]

Mine is doing something similar. I have no idea what it's doing.

[mandirose1]

I'm pretty sure it's just one of those adventurous leaves. I'm just going to leave it for a month or 2 to see what it might do. (Though I think it'll do a whole lotta nothin')
The root system looks good, so I'm not too worried about it sucking a bunch of energy from the plant. The leaves are wrinkled due to way too much moisture being trapped in the crap sphagnum of big box store orchids and all.

Thanks everyone!