Volunteer blooming
 

When you buy seed grown plants, sometimes you will find a second (and smaller) plant in the pot. These come from slower developing protocorns sticking to the roots of the more vigorous seedlings in the flask.

I found one such tiny plant at the base of a large seedling I bought from Cal-Orchids several years ago. The larger plant has been blooming for 3 years now. I managed to save the smaller plant, and it just produced it's first flower (a single, where the mature larger sibling usually produces 7-10 flowers per inflorescence).

It is C. Penny Candy (harrisoniana x Caudebec 'Linwood' (4N) AM/AOS). The first photo is the larger sibling, and the second photo is the volunteer:

A delightful bonus! It will be most interesting to see what it does as the plant matures.

The volunteer is barely half the height of the mature sibling, so I am sure it will increase the flower count - and perhaps the flower quality a little.

This is great! Thanks for sharing. I think I have a couple of pots containing several seedlings that are too intertwined to separate at the moment. Did you wait to separate until you had two clearly different growing directions or earlier? I'm thinking I'll try to get lead divisions when the time comes.

David

Wait until they're easy to separate, even if it takes several repottings. They will probably grow in different directions, which makes it even easier down the line.