| Hey, it's OK to boast about your orchids. It's nice to read about success stories as well as problems.
I'm not sure if this is the explantation for your comments about the phals, but my experience is that many of the older hybrid phals only produce one spike with 5 flowers (plus or minus two). The flowers themselves will keep getting a little bigger as the plant grows bigger, but they only produce a single spike. Some of the newer hybrids where they've crossed a hybrid back to a species have multiple spikes, but the flowers are a little smaller. I have some crosses back to Phal amabilis that produce several flower spikes as do my phal amabilis species plants. One of my Phal luedemannianas has 4 spikes right now. Some of these may only produce keikis, though, since species are much more likely to do this than are hybrids. The species also typically bloom from much smaller plants, but large commercial growers also "force" plants to bloom before they're quite mature, and/or out of season. Growing in your home, they're probably much closer to their natural conditions and blooming cycle. They can kick back and just be themselves.  |