If you have a healthy plant which won't flower, you need to research your plant and learn what you need to do. Phals need good light, need a cool down in the fall. Please join your local Orchid Society or learn online how to grow this plant. Your leaves look very dark which suggests the plant is not getting enough light. It needs about 6 weeks of cooler temps in the fall to initiate spikes. Give it stronger light and put it in a cool room. Use lamps if you don't have a window in the cooler room. You want at least a 15 degree temp drop over 6 weeks to spur the plant to flower. Light and temps are your problem. Jane

Its called a keiki, and it is indeed a new plant. It can be likened to the baby plants that sprout from spider plant stems. Eventually, probably early next spring, it will have sufficient enough roots you will be able to remove it from the mother plant and pot it on its own. Look under the FAQ's at the very first and 2nd question. They can answer some of your questions.

Hey! IT WORKS! If you remove the flower bud right as it is starting to develop, you can treat it with rooting hormone. The most popular hormone is called Kikigrow (although I have had success with rootone. The best way to do this is to pack a small amount of hormone on the cut surface. With a twist-tie or an orchid clip (those little hair-clip things) fasten a small amount of moist sphagnum moss over the cut. Essentially, you are creating a small, exposed, air layer. This method can actually be used at each 'node' along the length of the stem. Along the stem there are small leaflets that grow. You can use a sterile scalpel to cut these leaves from the stem, and treat them in the same way. Professional orchid growers actually cut the entire stems from their plants and send them off to propagation labs where they cut the spikes into sections (each containing one node. These sections are treated with hormone, then placed in moss propagation beds. So yeah, propagation from spikes is very effective if down right! Here is a link that might be useful: Envi Sci and FshyPlnts

My wife Suzanne and I learned how voracious monarch caterpillars can be when we set up a monarch breeding colony after we moved to Naples, Florida (Zone 10b). To protect the adults and caterpillars in our garden from birds and other predators, we installed a large (36-by-60-foot) covered screened enclosure, which we now also use as a sunny and mosquito-free dining patio. In the enclosure, we planted dozens of flowering milkweeds, which provide the only leaves monarch caterpillars eat. We watched as the butterflies laid their eggs on the milkweeds, and the caterpillars that hatched out dined on the leaves.At first we could hardly believe what a good appetite the cats had. We resigned ourselves to buying more milkweeds to meet the demand, until the eaten plants can regenerate their leaves and the milkweed cuttings we planted elsewhere had a chance to grow. When the cats grow large enough, they create their chrysalides in which they develop, and weeks later they emerge as beautiful monarchs. You can click on each of the photos we made here to enlarge it and see its details.In nature, the chrysalides would normally be hung from branches, but in our screened enclosure, they seem to prefer to hang from the enclosure's frame. When the green coverings become transparent, we love watching the new butterflies emerge and spread their wet wings out to dry. They eventually take their first flight in the enclosure, totally safe from predators. Now when we dine, we have literally hundreds of butterflies flying all around us, and occasionally landing on our heads, shoulders or hands. Here’s a photo we took of two pairs of monarchs mating to produce the next generation:Since we starting breeding monarchs, we've also bred five other local species of butterflies, providing the specific varieties of plants necessary to feed their own caterpillars. We've never before felt closer to nature. Our visitors have the same reaction, especially the members of our Gardeners of Southwest Florida group. The club schedules free gardening classes two or three times a month throughout the year. The classes are sometimes held in our garden and its enclosure, and often in the gardens of many other members. In that way our members and their guests can learn which plants each class host grows successfully in this semi-tropical environment. Class topics include butterfly gardening and dozens of other subjects, each designed to make Floridians better gardeners.Everything in our group is free: membership, classes, snacks, drinks, etc. Its extensive and informative web site at www.meetup.com/FloridaGardeners includes hundreds of photos and full details of the 123 previous gardening classes and upcoming classes. Over 1,300 families with gardens around Naples and Fort Myers are current members of the group, and more are always welcome. Whether you'd like to attract butterflies to your property or learn other gardening techniques, we feel you'd enjoy meeting many other local gardeners by joining this free group. Here are some of them posing after a class in the screened enclosure in our Naples garden:Peter Kacalanos and Suzanne Cherney, leaders, Gardeners of Southwest Florida