Basal keiki....like two plants for the price of one?

[seaj]

I've been on the hunt for cheap phals to play around with and during my last excursion I came across this really great plant that I almost decided to take home. It had a leafspan about 8 inches across with 6 or so leaves. The plant had 3 dense branching spikes with 2 inch flowers with red dots on a yellow backdrop. Growing from the base of the plant was a basal keiki with two leaves about 4 inches across. I also saw another plant in the store with a basal keiki as well. Now for $15, the price didn't seem too bad to me, but the store next door had large phals for $6 each that were begging to be experimented on.

Price stuff aside, basal keikis add value to a plant right? I know that basal keikis, can result from crown issues like crown rot, but on a healthy plant, don't they potentially offer double the blooming power when the keiki matures? Or do they redirect blooming energy away from the parent plant? Sorry, I don't know what I'm talking about.

If you had the opportunity to pick between two healthy identical plants with the exception of one having a basal keiki, which one would you pick?