Phal Bud fell off ????

[anna1029]

This is my first orchid that I just bought for myself 4 days ago. It has 10 flowers on it right now and there was one bud on the bottom, this morning it was lying on the counter top. Is this an indication of something? Why would it fall off? Is there anything I'm doing wrong?

[kmarch]

Anna,

This is a very common occurance. Often when a Phal is moved from one set of conditions to another (e.g. from a nusery to your living room) that change will cause a bud to drop (or as we often say, "blast"). Although dissapointing, it is usually not a cause for concern.

Get ahold of a good Phalaenopsis culture sheet like the one found on this forum or at the AOS website (www.aos.org) and familiarize yourself with good Phal culture. Afterwords if you have questions, feel free to ask here.

Happy Growing!

[anna1029]

Thank you. I feel so much better now. I would hate to think that after 3 days my plant started dying. My only other question is about light exposure. I've read on the culture sheet not to expose them to direct light, but they still need light. I do not have window sills in my house, therefore right now it is sitting on my kitchen island within a few feet from a patio door and a window. There's not much sun in the morning in that area of the house, however around 11 AM the sun will be there and the room will be bright, is that sufficient enough. There's one room in the house that gets most of the light early in the morning, but hardly any later on. If the room is nice and bright, is that sufficent enough as far as light exposure is concerned?

[kmarch]

Anna,

Phals can be pretty heardy plants so unless you chop it up or something drastic like that it will take more than 3 days to kill.

Regarding your light exposure, yes I think either location you describe will be ok. What we want to avoid is the plant sitting in a place where the bright sunlight hits it directly. I think your kitchen island sounds good.

Cheers

[DDS2007]

hi there !
don't worry at all , my Phal lost 7 buds when i first took her home , but now it's doing absolutely great .
Phals like 1000 foot candles of light. if (like me) you can't really understand what that means , try this simple trick.

hold a white paper near your Phal , between it and the source of light (window, door) the time in which it recieves the most intense light , now put you hand one foot away from the paper and see what shadows does your hand cast on the paper? is it very well defined? if so then this might be too much light for a Phal, if it was hazy and not so much defined it roughly means u got the lighting right !

pretty simple trick !
enjoy

[Lea C]

I, like Anna, have brought my first Phal home and thought I succeeded in killing it within one month. It has two tall stems, each having 3 beautiful flowers and one bud. One stem dropped all its flowers in one week. The other stem kept its flowers for another two weeks. Now I have two tall stems with nothing on them. I was in more shock than my Phal. My leaves look great but they are the color of the green on this page. I have another leaf forming on the top of the larger leaves so I know the plant is not dead yet! I did some reading and thought that I should cut back the stems above a node but below the last blooms. I did this and within a couple of days I have one small shoot forming on only one stem. Any suggestions on what is happening? Is this a cycle my plant will go through? I am that new that I know nothing right now. I better hit the library and study up I guess.

[kmarch]

Originally Posted by Lea C

I have one small shoot forming on only one stem. Any suggestions on what is happening? Is this a cycle my plant will go through?

It sounds like it is initiating another inflorescence though I can't be sure without seeing it. It's a perfectly normal thing for Phals. Many (most?) of the hybrid phals will send out another flower spike from one of those nodes if the old spike is trimmed.