I dodged a big mistake a couple of weeks ago.

I noticed my Paph Julius was starting to spike about a month ago. Then I
was heartbroken to see the bud had blasted (or so I thought). The tip
looked brown. Usually I remove blasted paph spikes when I find them but I
was busy with other things and figured I'd get to it eventually.

Now a month later the spike is about 4 inches tall and what I thought was
bud blast was a bud that looked very dark brown but still very much alive.
I'm still a few weeks away from seeing this first bloom seedling.

Sometimes it's a good thing to be too busy to keep the plants cleaned up.

Good Growing,
Gene

That's good information. You may save someone from a mistake some day
with that.
One of the 2 first bloom Paphs I have in bloom right now had that look.
The bud went through a stage when it looked sort of brown. It wasn't so
bad that I was tempted to pluck it off, but I was watching and wondering
if it was starting to blast. It was OK, of course.

Steve


Gene Schurg wrote:

I dodged a big mistake a couple of weeks ago.

I noticed my Paph Julius was starting to spike about a month ago. Then I
was heartbroken to see the bud had blasted (or so I thought). The tip
looked brown. Usually I remove blasted paph spikes when I find them but I
was busy with other things and figured I'd get to it eventually.

Now a month later the spike is about 4 inches tall and what I thought was
bud blast was a bud that looked very dark brown but still very much alive.
I'm still a few weeks away from seeing this first bloom seedling.

Sometimes it's a good thing to be too busy to keep the plants cleaned up.

Good Growing,
Gene