I tried pollinating and... well, not happy.

[cythaenopsis]

I have a blooming phalaenopsis that had four healthy flowers. After watching a video on how you can pollinate an orchid flower, I decided to give it a try. I selected two flowers, plucked open the pollen cover, snagged the sticky line, took out the pollen, then exchanged the pollen between the two flowers. I followed the technique shown in the video and it turned out pretty much as I saw it.


Well... about 2 days after I did this, I noticed one flower starting to droop. 4 days later, the drooping flower is clearly dying, ready to drop in another day or so. The other pollinated flower is now starting to droop as well.

Did I do something wrong? I thought that pollination would cause a seed growth in the flower stem. Instead, it's as if pollinating them sent a trigger to say "you did your job, time to die." At least the other two flowers are still healthy...