Thanks everyone. I googled 'Terminal spike' Paul & it looks just like that. I have quite a few very healthy phals but as I said saved this one as it was so pretty. It really is in bad condition - root system is still very iffy - but improving. Hopefully I'll end up with a keiki :)

Hi! ^ ^ I think it could be of use to someone if I type out my experience. Perhaps a collection of experiences will lead to some form of conclusion of the hypothesis about lighting etc. It began when one of my two orchids had a nasty little pussy cat tip over it's pot. The orchid's spike severed completely off. Since my orchids both bloom at the same time I cut the spike off the other orchid. Of both the spikes, the yellow had 2 blooms (1 bud spike was 6 inches long). The purple had 8 buds (one bloom spike was 10 inches long) which is the one the cat had tipped over. I will also note that I put the purple stem immediately into water since I had heard the plant crash. I have had both spikes into a clear glass vase (about 1-1.5 cup of water) in a pitch black game room except light from the teli and monitors. To be more specific the vase is in the shadow of the "light". The temp is always around 78 degrees fahrenheit. I enjoyed the blooms for a couple of weeks and the large bloomed ones finally started to look fatigued so I pinched those off (about 4-5). The rest dropped off by themselves. I totally forgot about these stems/spikes. Here is where it gets interesting, about 2-3 month later I was dusting and cleaning up the "mess" at the sink when I noticed the yellow spike was still green at the end, the purple was brown so I cut it under water to a healthy green looking point. I had decided regardless of the various postings on the intraweb saying that a spike couldn't grow roots I would still let these two try. It now has been 5 months, the yellow has a small root growing at the end, the purple is still green. They are in the pitch black room, I change the water sporadically from every 4 days to 3 weeks with tepid from faucet. Basically when I remember the poor babies but more so at the beginning than now (which changes now I see a little root). I will also mention I was using the cities icky chlorinated fluoride injected tap water, I will now change to bottled water and watch the results.

LOL, Liz. Your clivia story is (please forgive) too funny. I'm glad it's recovering. Actually, I did something like that to a phal spike a month or so ago. Meant to keep a spike on a violacea hybrid, and in a mindless moment, snip! What a coincidence! Great minds and all that. I just this second started a thread inspired by this one. Please add your clivia story to it. You can get tree ferm from Carter and Holmes or from Cal West. Get the coarse or medium kind. The fine is too powdery. If it's too long, you can break small portions of it with your hands or by pushing on a pile of it with something like a clay pot. The smaller pieces then fall to the bottom. I use pieces broken down to app two inches or so. You can also get various sizes of perlite from Cal West. They call it Rok, I think. However, I confess I couldn't figure out their grading system as they offer grades by number, so I'm not sure I really got the biggest kind. It was a little bigger than the HD kind. However, the HD kind seems ok to me. I had a bag around that I used before buying more. It's not terribly expensive if you are going to do a number of orchids. 1/4 cubic foot of either tree fern or perlite will do a lot of orchids. And you use less sphag. I think just the act of mixing the sphag with the tree fern and perlite fluffs it up so you use a lot less sphag. Which is mostly good, unless you are a severe underwaterer.

Thanks for the reply, Tuez. But I'm afraid my glasses were dirty. :( I just went downstairs to check on it one more time, see the miracle once more, and poof! It wasn't there... Thing is, I had it in my hand when I "saw" those nubs. But they are just extra-fat pre-bloomed empty nodes after all. Should have turned the plant. There are new buds forming, but on the tip. Not that they aren't welcome, but nothing completely astonishing about that. So, everyone can go back to sleep now, no miracles tonight. Hmmm, one more thing learned the hard way. Turn the plant around when you "see" buds.