Phalaenopsis Gold Tris 'Desk Pot' keiki in full bloom

Phalaenopsis Gold Tris 'Desk Pot' 

About 3 months after I first noticed the start of a spike, my little Phal Gold Tris Keiki is in full bloom!  The flower spike is bigger than the orchid itself, with 4 full-sized yellow flowers. Of course, the mother plant produces larger numbers of flowers and multiple spikes, but this is still one precocious bloomer!

Closeup of Phalaenopsis Gold Tris 'Desk Pot'

The color is less saturated than usual, most likely due to the very warm weather of the last month.

Flower spike on a tiny keiki

A 1 year old phalaenopsis keiki

I first wrote about this Phalaenopsis Gold Tris keiki just over a year ago.  Keikis are orchid clones that sometimes grow on a mature orchid plant. Late last summer, when its roots had grown over 3 inches, I cut the keiki from its mother orchid, and planted it in the pot shown above.  The little orchid has more than tripled its roots system since then, but hasn't done much growth with its two leaves.

flower spike on a 1-year old keiki

Today, I noticed a green nub growing to the side of the orchid's base.  Much to my surprise, this wasn't some errant root, but actually a tiny new flower spike!  Although I have heard before that keikis sometimes flower within a year of growth, I never expected it from an orchid this small.  Its flowers would be almost as big as the entire orchid plant!

I'll be watching closely to see how this flower spike develops.

Phalaenopsis Gold Tris 'Desk Pot' in full bloom

Phalaenopsis Gold Tris 'Desk Pot'

     My Phalaenopsis Gold Tris is now in full bloom.  The first of the flowers actually opened on February 23rd, and further buds have been slowly maturing every since then.  

Phal Gold Tris 'Desk Pot'

     The orchid produced 21 flowers on two spiked.  However, 15 flowers was the most to ever be open at the same time.  The earliest blooms have since started to fade, while the last two buds have yet to open.

Phal Gold Tris 'Desk Pot' closeup

     The flowers are much more vibrantly colored this time, compared to the pale yellow blooms from last season.  Again, I attribute the winter cold for bringing out the red tones on these flowers.

Phal Gold Tris 'Desk Pot'

     The flowers are 2 inches across, and unscented.  Half the flowers face to the front, and half to the back of the plant.  The spikes are about 8 inches tall.

Phalaenopsis flower spikes update

Phalaenopsis Orchids in spike

     Six of my phalaenopsis orchids went into spike earlier this fall.  The spikes are maturing at various rates and all seem to be growing well. 

Noid Phalaenopsis

     

     The tallest of these belongs to my noid phal, which started opening its flowers around the first week of January.  I first noticed the side spikes on Nov 5, meaning that the spikes took about 2 months to start blooming. 

     The orchid blasted two buds while I was away, but has opened more flowers successfully since then.  There are relatively few buds on each side spike, possibly because these are reblooms from old spikes, rather than new ones.  I'll do a full post on the orchid once it reaches full bloom, which may take as much as a month longer.

Dtps. Jungo City

     Dtps. Jungo City started growing its spike on October 15.  Over three months have now passed, and the spike is still growing.  The spike is 14" tall. Its terminal nodes are developing into buds, so I can hope to see the first flowers open within a month.

Dtps. Yu Pin Burgundy

     Dtps. Yu Pin Burgundy started growing its first spike on Nov 6, and its second spike on Dec 4. The spikes are 9.5" and 4" tall, respectively, and have much more growth to do before they mature.

Phal. Gold Tris 'Desk Pot'

     Phalaenopsis Gold Tris started growing its new spike around Nov 13. The side spike started growing about a month later.  The main spike is now about 5" tall, and starting to form buds.

Closeup on Phal. Gold Tris spike

     I'm excited by the darkening tone around the buds, in case that means that more red color will show through in the flowers when it blooms.  The orchid arrive in bloom last spring with flowers that were mostly yellow and white. I'll be curious to see if blooming in colder temperatures will cause more red color to be visible.

Phalaenopsis Memoria Audrey Meldman 'Mendenhall'

     Phal. Memoria Audrey Meldman started growing a spike about two months ago, on Nov 13.  The spike has grown very slowly; it's quite thin, and only a few inches tall.  The side spike, which first appeared a month ago, is so small that I'm wondering if it will turn out to be just a single flower.  This is another orchid that I'm very curious to see if it will bloom redder for me, than the flowers it arrived with last Spring. However, at this rate, the weather might very well warm up all over again before the flowers are ready to open.

Noid Phalaenopsis in spike

     The final of my spiking phals is the spotted noid, whose spike started growing last month.  It's growing at a good rate, though it will be a few months more before these flowers are ready to open.

And that's all of them!

Phals grow side spikes

Phal Memoria Audrey Meldman 'Mendenhal' (left), Phal Gold Tris 'Desk Pot' (right)

     Two of my spiking phals already had old spikes from blooming last Spring, which until recently have been inactive.  Now both are starting a side spike from the topmost bract below the ones which had already produced flowers.

Phal Memoria Audrey Meldman 'Mendenhal' (left), Phal Gold Tris 'Desk Pot' (right)

     Looks like I'll have double the flowers to look forward to.

Two more phals in spike

Phal Gold Tris 'Desk Pot' and Phal Memoria Audrey Meldman 'Mendenhall'

     About 3 weeks ago I posted about some phals growing spikes, as well as some growths I wasn't certain about.  Both of those have since turned out to be spikes.  While the old spikes on these two phals remain green but inactive, both orchids are now growing new spikes.

Closeup on Phal Gold Tris spike

Closeup on Phal Memoria Audrey Meldman spike

     Both orchids are growing in the terrarium, safe from kitty attacks.  For both of these flowers, I look forward to seeing if the colors come out different in my care than when I purchased them in bloom last spring.

Spike or root?

Dtps Yu Pin Burgundy on left, Phal Gold Tris 'Desk Pot' on right

     It's a question we often ask ourselves, as amateur orchid growers, when our precious orchids start growing auspicious protrusions of uncertain origin.  With phals, roots and spikes can look very similar in the earliest stages, so when I first noted the two nubs in the picture above, I wasn't quite ready to decide what they were.

The same growths, one week later

     One week later, the growth on Dtps. Yu Pin Burgundy has clearly revealed itself to be a spike.  The Phal. Gold Tris, on the other hand, remains mysterious.  I think I see three faint lines, indicating segmentation, but I can't be sure.  It could just be a weirdly shaped root. In one more week, the answer should be clear.

Dtps Yu Pin Burgundy

Phal Gold Tris 'Desk Pot'

     Both orchids are healthy, and have grown new leaves and roots since I've last written about them.  The old spike on Phal Gold Tris remains green, but otherwise inactive.

Growth on Phal Memoria Audrey Meldman 'Mendenhall'

     In addition, there's a promising new growth on Phal Memoria Audrey Meldman. In this case it is far too early to even hope to guess whether this is a spike or not.  It's in the right place for a spike, and many of my other phals are now spiking, but otherwise, I'm just being overly optimistic.  A few more weeks will show what this is with more certainty.

Phal Memoria Audrey Meldman 'Mendenhall'

     The phal has been growing well, and its root system overshadows the size of the plant.  

Phalaenopsis side spike

     And finally, the growths on my Phal noid have revealed themselves to be side spikes, rather than more keikis.  There is one such side spike growing from each of the three main spikes.  Exciting!

New Orchid: Phal Gold Tris 'Desk Pot'

Phalaenopsis Gold Tris 'Desk Pot'

     This is the last of my new orchids, and the only one that arrived in bloom.  I saved this post for last, in hopes that it would give the rest of the flower buds time to open.  Instead, all buds blasted, the oldest flower wilted, and only two flowers now remain in bloom.  It's common for phals to drop blowers after getting shocked into new growing conditions, and that's exactly what happened to me.

     The flowers themselves on this miniature orchid were a bit of a disappointment to me, and a reminder to research orchids online rather than trusting photos from the vendor's websites.  Here is what the picture on the website showed:

Phal Gold Tris as advertised: Link to plant listing

     I was really attracted to the contrast between the dark pink centers and the yellow of the petals.  The flowers I received were mostly pale yellow fading into white.  It's still cute, of course, but it's not what I wanted.  It is possible that differences in growing conditions may bring out more of the red, but searches online indicate that the pale yellow blooms I got are much more on par with the norm for this plant.

Phal Gold Tris 'Desk Pot' closeup, with and without flash

     Even with the plant I received, the lighting used in photography makes a big difference in the appearance of the plant.  Flash helps bring out a richer yellow color, as well as intensify the red on the lip.  Natural white light, on the other hand, makes a very accurate portrayal of how the flowers actually look to my eyes.

Phal Gold Tris roots

     The phal is relatively miniature, with 8 leaves ranging in size from 1.5" to 5.5".  The spike is 7" tall, and the flowers are just under 2" wide.  Since the moss on this phal did not look as fresh as on my other new phals, I decided to repot.  Peeling away the outermost layer of moss revealed a central core of packed older moss in the middle of the root ball (picture, above left).  This means that during last year's repotting, the vendor upgraded the phal to a larger pot without disturbing the root mass.  

     This is the same kind of up-potting that killed off the roots on my Wilsonara Pacific Perspective, although in that case I let the situation progress for many years before finally repotting the poor orchid.  In this case, the older sphagnum moss was still in fairly good condition, and all the central roots were alive.  They did however have many breaks, so I cut them off anyway.  The phal has plenty of healthy newer unbroken roots to support itself with.

     I repotted the phal into phal bark mix, since I am still not comfortable with using sphagnum moss for potting media.  It stays wet for so much longer between waterings, that I am constantly worrying about rotting my orchids' roots.  Maybe I'll come around to the benefits of moss media by the time I am ready to repot my two other new phals next spring.

     Ultimately, even though this is not quite the phal I wanted, it is still cute and appears to be in great health.  It did not cost all that much, so that if I find myself running out of shelf space for my more favored orchids, I won't feel guilty for bringing this one over to my windowsill at work.