What would you do with this phal.?

[Dimples]

Hey friends!

I’m interested in hearing what you would do with this phal. if it belonged to you. Open to all ideas and feel free to let the conversation drift.

This was a rescue from my chiropractor’s office. It has lived like this happily for over a year, growing more roots up into the air, a few leaves, and blooming twice for me.

While it seems happy, the setup needs to change. It’s unstable and takes up a lot of real estate.

Roots:
• There is currently only one living root in the pot.

• The root cores (“strings”) from the old pot-roots are anchoring the plant in the pot. They are non-viable.

[Dimples]

In all its glory. Forgot to mention there’s a sparkly glitter ball permanently encased in roots.

[Roberta]

If you can get a tall-form pot (of the sort that is used for Asian cymbidiums) you could coax some of those good roots that are above the medium but within the footprint of the plant into it. Maybe, depending on width, even gently coax some of those aerial roots downward. With or without the glitter ball... but the goal, I think, is to possibly reduce the footprint or at least keep it from getting any larger.

[Dimples]

What’s going to happen to the leaf growth pattern/direction/orientation/etc. if I flip it over 180°?

Would the new leaves still grow down-as-related-to-gravity while the old leaves are pointing up?

Would it be funky and twisted for awhile? Or would it completely mess up everything?

Or would everything carry on as usual? I’m having a hard time visualizing it with a phal.

[Roberta]

180 degrees? that's upside down... would you then maybe put the roots in a basket above the plant? New leaves would just continue to emerge from the crown. If you can manage the watering, etc of what becomes, essentially, a mounted plant, that actually how it grows in nature (sideways or "upside down". You'll never get water caught in the crown, of course.

My original suggestion would keep it in more or less its current orientation, just try to corral those roots. It is sort of growing sideways - again, natural but may not fit into your space. You could just try to rotate to get the leaves pointed vertically., and again corral these roots.

[rbarata]

By the way, most of the roots I see in the photos look viable.

[Dimples]

Originally Posted by rbarata

By the way, most of the roots I see in the photos look viable.

Yes, it has lots of good roots. The roots you see in the lower part of the pot are forks from the same root. No active tips and the old tips rotted when I left it in a shallow pool of water for a week during cold weather.

The one root tip in the lower red circle just entered the bark and isn’t being counted as “in the pot” just yet.

---------- Post added at 03:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:41 PM ----------

My question is more to do with needing to streamline the plant’s physical shape or come up with another creative way to keep it.

[Arizona Jeanie]

I would un-pot it and clean off the roots. I can't get a good look at it from the picture, but if it has a long stem I would cut off the bottom of the stem--the part down in the pot. There's usually a spot with few roots below, cut there. Then you can fit it down into a pot with the leaves at the surface and most of the roots into the bark. They oddly don't seem to miss a beat with some stem trimming.
I do incorporate some 1-2 inch river run granite rocks in with the bark. They add ballast, don't retain water, and help spread out the roots. Seems more natural than a glitter ball!

[Dimples]

Sorry y’all, I miscommunicated. Besides stuffing roots into a pot, what pipe-dream/fun ideas can you come up with? How should we experiment with this phal?

---------- Post added at 09:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:55 PM ----------

The glitter ball was part of the original arrangement. It started with more but I was able to remove them. This last one was too well attached to multiple roots, so it gets to stay. Lol

[Dimples]

I ended up stuffed all the roots into a larger pot, like you all suggested. It’s putting out new root tips like crazy and growing a new leaf.