I suspect you may be losing the spike due to lack of humidity. They tend to brown and dry up if there isn't enough moisture in the air. While almost all Catasetinae have a dry rest in their native habitats as far as rain is concerned, it is normally not without fog or mist which maintain humdity during those dry days. I have had some luck just watering the spike every day while it is forming when my humidity has been low (I don't mist it because I can't control where the water goes). As a lesser-included cause, you may have mites which can devastate both the spike and the plant. But the fact you have successfully gotten your plant to spike each year leads me to believe it is a humidity problem. We can check it out if you put the plant in a box and just send it to me. :-)

Here comes Howard the Heretic again to muddy further the murky waters of debate. First of all I don't believe that the experienced growers here (cough, CJ.. Richard... did Arthur chime in?) track down the parentage of every hybrid they acquire and split the differences in culture, etc. ... Impossible. No, what the experienced grower does is establish a baseline set of conditions in their greenhouse such that 90%, if not 95% of their plants are happy and then fine tune the care of the recalcitrant plants by moving them! After all, you cannot re-site your greenhouse because a single plant requires just a little less south-west sun than the GH gets at present. Ridiculous overstatement yes, but what I am reading says to the novice that they must get into the plant the individual plant in order to grow it. I submit that with a hybrid or intergeneric (and 'intergeneric' without any other qualifier always means an intergeneric of the Odontoglossinae/Oncidinae variety) using the culture appropriate for any one of the parents will result in culture that, if not perfect, at least will not kill the hybrid. And isn't that the first step? First, do no harm. Then you can work from there to figure out the minutiae. Trust me, Clara, you do not want a Jay's site for hybrids or rather, such a thing is simply not necessary. All we do is ignore what we learn at such sites anyway!!! I mean, how many of us attempt to supply 4,000fc of light for Cattleya _____________ or a 115F daytime max for Grammatophyllum ____________? No, we give the orchid what we have to give and it either likes it or it doesn't. Am I wrong? Luckily such an approach can work, just because a particular species 'likes' 4000fc and a majority of specimens were observed to be experiencing just that, often it is discovered that the very same species will do well in 2500fc. If people didn't try to grow plants in 'incorrect' conditions we wouldn't know what is ultimately possible. And no, I am not turning a corner as regards my light theories. Just observing that observing good health and growth in an orchid in ones supplied conditions usually sets the standard for care. Attempting to re-create every individual weather station report for every single plant in a collection, even a small one, in a single growing area is simply an impossible assignment. H

oh, how interesting. They claim "BOSTON" is a registered trademark. I'm not finding a registration record, but I'm no expert on Benelux trademarks. The usual deal in the U.S. is that if it's a trademark, it is not a clonal name or a grex. You can't have both. The same entity, ANTHURA B.V. CORPORATION, has a patent in the US for what they call ANTHURA GOLD. The link is below. Long story short, I think you have a noid as far as the RHS is concerned. Here is a link that might be useful: Anthura Gold patent

Amy, I'd been looking at every web picture of this cross I could before it bloomed, and there are lots of differences. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this plant is a seed cross, not a mericlone or clone, so coloration could be different from plant to plant. I'm pretty sure Helena from this forum posted a pic of this cross last year, and hers was VERY orange. Sharon