Weird Phalenopsis growth/flower?

[marcoeverard]

Just noticed this weird leaf growth/flower. The leaf seems to be growing on a stalk rather than coming out of the old leaves. Any thoughts as to what this might be and the cause of it. All the others are growing normally and flowering well.

[MattWoelfsen]

Hello marcoeverard! You have a terminal spike. Thus spike will continue to lengthen into a flower spike. It will produce beautiful flowers. As long as you continue to give your Phalenopsis good culture, your plant will flourish. However after awhile, it can take an entire year, your plant will stop growing, stop producing flowers. It will eventually die.

As long as you continue to give it proper care, your plant will replace itself with basel keiki. You will start to see little leaves grow at the base of the plant. Sometimes you will get two or more.

It is a long process but eventually as the keiki continues to grow, you will get a new plant. This has happened to one of my oldest and fondest Phalaenopsis I own.

Here is a recent picture of my plant. Notice the yellow stalk? That is the remains of the mother plant. I can probably detach both keiki but I'm keeping it this way as a remembrance.



Terminal spikes usually happen as a result of trauma.

[marcoeverard]

Thanks that is very interesting. Not sure what the trauma would have been except maybe repotting although none of the others seemed to mind.

[lepetitmartien]

Basal rejecting are not keikis, and should not be separated (there is a definitive risk of things going very wrong).

Anyway the "mother" plant (it all her anyway) will dwindle anyway at one point, and in the years after, it'll be just as if nothing had happened.

[Fairorchids]

The terminal spike is a relatively rare event, which seems to happen randomly.

It probably had nothing to do with growing conditions. If 'odd' growing conditions were the trigger, terminal spikes would be reported much more frequently.

Years ago I had an intergeneric Vandaceous plant, which only bloomed through terminal spikes. However, it set a new basal keiki each time, so it kept going. That plant had Paraphalaenopsis, Vanda and possibly one more genus mixed in.