[Cynthia, Prescott, AZ]

OK, my turn to weigh in on this one. There is a rule of thumb on the retention of older bulbs. You should have a minimum of three mature bulbs IN A ROW. This means that there should be the most recent growths that are mature and the next two oldest, 1 year old and two years old. So, if you have room in the pot, I personally prefer 4 bulbs in a row. The exception I make to that is if the plant has been having a hard time for some reason, and you want either to have more reserves for the new growth to come to draw on, or any of these older growths were particularly undersized or damaged. The older leafless bulbs are marginal for adding new food (only a small area of green, the bulb itself) but are a reservoir of energy to draw on when the new growth starts. The reason for leaving 3 or 4 bulbs is that under most conditions that is enough reservoir to assure that the new growth will mature adequately and flower.

Now about your plant. If it is truly putting out 2 new growths on every growth from the previous year, your plant may have a hormonal problem, probably brought about by some chemical treatment in the past, something that it may grow out of with time. So, the important question is, do the new growths reach a mature size. I had the problem with a couple of plants with this that had progressively smaller growths every year until they became very thickly growing seedlings, from what once were mature plants. If your plant is maturing the growths adequately, your plant is probably genetically producing those growths and all is OK and ignore the following. For my plants, the one that I retained got a reduction in new growths by knocking off all but one new growth from each previous growth. Now, after about 2-3 years of this, the plant is blooming sized and the strange condition has ceased.