What is growing on my orchid?

[mallen5630]

I used Keiki Paste on a few nodes on my orchid and I can't quite tell what is actually growing, they don't look like any of the pictures I've seen. One looks quite a bit like it's just another flowering branch but the buds are a LOT smaller than the normal buds have been. The other ones look like roots sort of but no leaves.
Any thoughts?

[Miri the Wildmage]

I'd say those first three pics were keikis, they don't look like flower buds to me. The other one is probably a new branch yes. Hard to tell at this stage though, keep us posted! Xx

[sweetjblue]

Photos 4&5 show a new flowering branch. Re-flowering off of an old spike might give you smaller flowers, it all depends on your growing conditions.

As to the rest of your pics. Keiki Paste is meant to be used only once on a bract/node and sparingly. From the looks of them you either used too much initially or applied it several times.

So what you have now is a proliferation of plant tissue, that in all likelihood will never differentiate into either a keiki or another flowering branch.

Using Keiki Paste on so many nodes really isn't good for your plant and to have all that trying to grow into something, anything, puts a major strain on the mother plant as a lot of its energy is going to those areas.

If you care more for the mother plant than you do about getting keikis you should remove those masses and next time try it on only one node and follow the instructions, once and sparingly.


Judi