Mike,

Congratulations on your Phal!

A lot of my Phals have a lot of green healthy leaves, just like yours, and
while they eventually do loose the bottom ones, they don't do it all that
frequently. My understanding is that a healthy Phal should grow new leaves
either more frequently or as frequently as loosing old ones. My impression
is that my Phals grow overall more leaves than average, and I suspect that
this is due to the low light growing environment that I have them in, but
they are healthy and bloom often twice a year or at least once a year, so I
don't think anything is wrong with that. It sounds like your Phal is doing
as well as most of mine are. Yes, 9 leaves is normal for mature Phals in
some environments (such as mine, and apparently yours too), whereas some
growers seem to have Phals that grow only 4 leaves at a time, and I think
that's normal too, as long as the plant is healthy and is not rapidly
loosing leaves, and is growing new ones often enough. I have never heard a
suggestion that too many leaves is unhealthy in Phals.

I don't think there is a rule about where exactly new spikes emerge from,
except that they generally emerge somewhere under a leaf or next to one. If
a spike grows out of the center crown, that's bad, but other than that it's
ok.

In response to your question about number of simultaneous spikes. I have
read somewhere that the tendency to have multiple spikes or not is in part
genetic (some Phals are genetically more likely to do it), in part a factor
of maturity of the plant (older plants are more likely to have more spikes),
and in part cultural/environmental and individual plant health issues. I
have a Phal that I bought 3.5 years ago, and until now it always had only
one spike at a time (but often bloomed twice a year). Last time it flowered
I did not cut down the spike, and it remained green. Now it is both
reflowering from the old spike and it has grown a new spike that it is also
flowering from now. :-) So even if a plant has before flowered from one
spike only, it may still flower from more than one spike simultaneously in
the future -- or it may not. Another thing I noticed is that a hybrid Phal
that last year had a single non-branched spike, might develop a branched
spike at a future flowering. They are exciting plants, and full of
surprises.

Best,
Joanna

"Mike" wrote in message
...
Hello Orchid Friends!

I bought a Phalaenopsis orchid last Christmas. It was halfway in bloom
and continued to bloom until February. It had 6 leaves when I bought
it (3 of them large, 1 medium size, and 2 small).

From the time the last blossom fell, it grew 3 additional large
beautiful leaves. Two of them are full grown and the 3rd one is still
growing. So, in total it has 9 healthy leaves.

Question: Is it normal for a phalaenopsis to grow 3 leaves in one
season and have 9 leaves total without any of the bottom ones dying
off?

The orchid has flowered 2 times in total. I know this from counting
where the old spikes were cut.

Question: Where do new flower spikes emerge from? Do they always come
from beneath the plant? Do they come from where the old spikes came
from? Or do they come from the next leaf up from the leaf that the
previous spike came from?

Question: My plant seems very healthy and happy. Would such a plan
possibly produce multiple spikes? It only had one spike when I bought
it.

Thank you in advance for your responses.

Mike

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