Bob,

As Claude suggested already, please post a picture either on
alt.binaries.pictures.orchids or on a Web site and send us a link to it.

If it's got buds, then it's a flower spike, since roots don't grow buds.
However, roots (especially at the beginning) sometimes do have an appearance
that uncannily resembles flower spikes to those who have not seen many of
them.

However, one mistake that people often make at the very beginning is to
count branches of one spike as separate flower spikes. Are you counting only
from the base of the plant? If so then 7 spikes that's a lot! Branched
spikes are much more common then separate spikes. A Phal with 7 separate
spikes is very rare, so I would be reluctant to believe it without positive
ID by someone who can say for sure that these are actually 7 separate flower
spikes. An anecdote from my own experience: I once bought a Phal at a plant
nursery and the sales person tried to tell me that the plant had 3 flower
spikes. I knew enough about Phals already by then to identify which were
spikes and which were roots, and so I told her that it had only one spike
and two aerial roots. I bought this plant for my mother-in-law, who a few
months later told me that her orchid now had 5 spikes. It turned out however
that it had only 2 spikes, but these two spikes had a total of 5 branches on
these two spikes.
..
I assume you do not happen to know what kind of Phal it is? Did it come with
a label? For example, I know that phal equestris and close hybrids of it
tend to keikie more freely than many other Phals, and phal equestris also
has a branching habit, as do other phal species and hybrids. If you do not
know the ID of your Phal, then it will be more difficult to determine
whether what it is doing is unusual for this type of Phal or not.

When you speak of partially dead stalks, what do you mean? Do you mean only
that these are old spikes? If so, many Phals, especially yellow ones or
hybrids of phal violacea for example, will reflower from old spikes on which
they had flowers before. Do you mean that there are parts of the spikes that
are yellow and dry? One possibility is that a part of the spike may go dry,
but then it might grow a branch or multiple branches from another part of
the spike, is that it? That happens fairly frequently?

How healthy is the mother plant now? You say that it has been "resurrected
from the dead". How many leaves does the mother plant have? Can it sustain
this level of activity? Or is this more likely a last effort to procreate
before it dies? If so, you might consider cutting off the flower spikes to
let the plant concentrate on growing healthy. Flower spikes take effort to
grow, and a plant may spend too much energy on it, and flower itself to
death. Then it's a matter of deciding whether the risk of loosing the plant
is worth this one flowering season. For example: I have a Phal now that has
flowered earlier this year already, and now its continuing to grow the
flower spike both from the tip and also from a branch. But this plant has
only 3 grown leaves, and while it has started a new leaf it is not
progressing on it fast, and one of its existing leaves has started growing
yellow, so it will soon have only two leaves (which in my book is cause for
alarm). I have decided that this weekend I am going to cut off this flower
spike, since I want this plant to concentrate its energy on growing the new
leaf. I don't want to loose the plant just to have more flowers on this old
spike, even though the plant obviously has other ideas.

I hope this helps.
Best,
Joanna

"Drbob92031" wrote in message
...
I need reassurance. I have a Phael that has been resurrected from the
dead. It
has kiekis (2) and as far as I can see 7 (seven) flower spikes which are
growing from partially dead stalks and from the base of the kiekis, which
are
also multi leafed and on the patrially dead stalks. There appears to be
buds on
these flower spikes. Are these actually flower spikes?
Bob