cutting flower stems

[orchidphile]

I like the look of brand new flower stems on my phals, so I had been cutting flower stems all the way down when they finish blooming. I have often heard it claimed that this is beneficial, since it gives the orchid a chance to rest.

Recently, however, I saw a YouTube video that claimed that phals store nutrients in their flower spikes, and that cutting the flower spike all the way down should not be done unless the spike is brown. The video claimed that cutting green flower spikes can result in the phal losing a leaf to replace nutrients lost to the spike.

Can anyone clarify which of these positions is true.

[Ray]

Certainly, anywhere there is green tissue, nutrients are being stored that can, with a few exceptions (Ca being the notable one), be shared with new growth on the plant.

Removing a spike, however, is not going to have that great of an impact, and in 45+ years of growing and removing them, I've never had a plant lose a leaf or react negatively any other way as a result.

[Orchid Whisperer]

Ray is exactly correct.