I can think of a couple of scenarios in which a rescued plant might
throw seven spikes:

1) It is still in fear of losing its life from the previous
mistreatment, so is throwing out all of the stops in order to attempt
to flower, reproduce, and extend its lineage.

or

2) It is no longer in fear of losing its life from the previous
mistreatment, so is throwing out all of the stops in order to attempt
to celebrate!

--

Ray Barkalow - First Rays Orchids - www.firstrays.com
Plants, Supplies, Books, Artwork, and Lots of Free Info!
..
"J Fortuna" wrote in message
news:46EFd.14701$hc7.12438@trnddc08...
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