This is one of the two phals from Home Depot in January this year. I got a large one with white petal&red lip flowers and a smaller one (but not mini) with white/pink candystripe flowers.
The orchids and other plants Home Depot carries here in NYC look terrible; dry and severaly beat up.
I must have been very lucky that day I shopped there because they had quite a few very healthy looking phals. After much time looking at and comparing this and that, I picked two phals.
Both plants had over 20 flowers on branching spikes and lasted until May! The larger one grew two leaves over the summer and spiking now!
The smaller one, which is the candystrip, grew 4 leaves and spiking now.
They are great growers. I haven't even repotted the smaller phal, which I think I should this coming year.
I wish I took a picture of the entire plant with lots of flowers on it, but I only have a shot of this individual flower and what the plant currently looks like.
I see 6 little buds and it is still keeping on growing.
Excited!!!!
A question for everyone.
If you examine the second picture, you will notice the current flower spike comes out from the second new leaf, which is the third from the top ( it grew 4 new leaves this year). There are 4 leaves between the previous spike and this new spike. My other phals grow one spike for each new leaf in a nice order from bottom to top.
In a situation like this one here, would the plant make any spikes between those 'wasted' four leaves? or it will only make new spikes past the current spiking point?