Came home early today, since I am feeling kind of sick, but before going off
to bed early, I decided to examine all my orchids for some kind of activity,
and my Paphs caught my attention.

My paph malipoense has a new growth that's already one and a half inches
long (only discovered it this evening), so I am excited since it's not only
in tall spike now but is more likely to someday spike again.

I really enjoy the sequential Paph (Paph Amelia Hart 'Alexandria') that I
got in October: it's on it's third flower already. What I like about it
especially is what I jokingly call "the changing of the guard": the older
flower will still look fresh a couple of days before it wilts, and then it
starts looking a bit peaked, and then the flower falls off on its own and at
almost the same time (or within a couple of days) a new flower opens. Is
this typical of sequential Paphs in general? This is cool. What I don't like
about another one of my paphs (Paph Deception II) is that when the flower
gets old it looks really ugly with a brown spot developing on its otherwise
white pouch, and thus the flower really needs to be cut off since it's butt
ugly at that point (though it's really beautiful until this happens). Since
this was my first Paph, I at first assumed that all Paphs get ugly when the
flower is old, and that was a bit off-putting for me, since most Phal blooms
age more gracefully (in my opinion). But the Paph Amelia Hart showed me
otherwise.

In addition, two of my Paph hybrids (that finished flowering in October and
November) are growing something new again (either a new leaf or a new spike,
don't know which yet, though if the rule of spike in same direction and leaf
in opposite is applied, I suspect that at least one of them is likely in
spike again).

Paphs are neat! :-)

Joanna