Hi, jj. I would leave the keiki as is, and there are several reasons why, but the biggie and #1 is this: Separated , it is a little thing, and in my experience little orchids are a pain in the humph. You have to keep a constant eye on them because they are tiny and delicate and in tiny pots that dry out quickly. Any mistake-- too dry for a day or so, or too wet, or too anything, and the little guys can just die on you. So I would leave it on the mother, and let it get nourishment from her, and have a lot less trouble. It will keep growing, looking better all the time, and if the mother recovers you'll have a terrific big plant with two crowns, capable of putting up multi-spikes and looking glorious. About the ugliness of the way the two are growing: I'm not sure what the problem is aesthetically, with the mother leaning one way and the keiki leaning the other. A sunburned plant is plain ugly no matter which way it's growing. There's no cure for it, except new leaves appearing. As the keiki gets bigger, the plant will look better. If the mother recovers, they should look just fine together like that. The sunburned mother is going to look ugly until she gets new leaves growing. If the crown was destroyed, the only way she can recover is thru keikis. However, if the crown is still there, she can still put out new leaves and recover her looks. Hope this helps some.

Most orchids produce the new growths from the base of the plant and sometimes they produce several new growths and eventually you end up with extra plants because the plant can be easily divided. Though the word keiki is a word for baby , it usually refers to babies not produced at the base of the plant. I suppose you should call your new plant a basal keiki and sometimes those babies produced at the top of the plant are more of a pain than a bonus. Examples: Keikis on soft cane Dendrobiums Keikis on reed stem Dendrobiums Keikis on Dendrobium kingianum Keikis on Phalaenopsis flowering stems

I understand your hesitation to stress the plant too much, but I would do something to facilitate those leaves getting up toward the surface: remove some of the bark from that side, snip some of the dried-out roots that are hindering its progress ... something. Personally, I'd soak it in a bucket/bowl for 30-35 minutes to soften things up, unpot it, still in the bowl, to gently clear it of that old bark. Then I'd snip all of the dead roots near the crown, and get it back in the pot in a way that will let that keiki grow upwards.

I'm super impressed! While I was 100% sure that plant was a goner, the root system was still so robust. I'd have a hard time tossing it myself, until I was sure there was no keiki in the works. Well done for giving it the time to grow a new main plant. It's unbelievable that it only took 10 months to bloom!