Georgetoo, Norman's is at orchids.com. Sorry :) PS Norman's has the widest offering of orchids -- about 200 phals right now, and several really beautiful waxy reds, and they add new ones often. My wishlist from them is always longer than I can afford. Also Big Leaf has a section called "novelty" orchids that are summer bloomers, and a "red/purple" section that are waxy reds.

It's 6-7 inches from 2 T5 fluorescent bulbs. My uncalibrated cell phone light meter app shows 300-350 fc. An identical Phal that has smaller degree of discoloration like this is on another shelf 9-10 inches from 2 T5s, and the light intensity measures there at 800-850 fc (I guess that reflector is better and/or lamp position is more directly above). Does not look like the light is too strong from these numbers. I touched the leaves, and they do not feel warm, so it's not the lamps' heat either. What then?

I tried to find the actual paper, but Dr. Wang was or is at Texas A & M and has done extensive research on this topic. Last go round I tried this and it works ! You must have enough light and enough was 750 on my light meter. Commaercial growers have two tricks to preventing phals from spiking 1) heat 2) light If you are hot then you need to cool the plants to initiate. This is a reprint Diana in Houston nicely shared her notes under a thread called "Phal Insider Growers info." Arthur and others added information and had questions. The following is primarily Diana's editing of that original post. Thanks Diana! I just came from my orchid club meeting where we had a local wholesale commercial phalaenopsis grower as the speaker. It was interesting but nothing special until he and Dr. Wang, our mentor and reknown orchid researcher, started talking about what was required to make phals bloom, and have more flowers, (a specialty of Dr. Wang's). Here's the scoop: 1. A phal NOT blooming can be determined by temperature AND light. A commercial grower can KEEP PHALS FROM BLOOMING until a particular time by keeping the temperature above 82 degrees. However, a cheaper way is to shade the greenhouse with 50% shade cloth. 2. To initiate spiking, the temperature must remain consistantly below 82 degrees. A temperature of 90 degrees, even for a short time, will prevent spiking. 3. To have more flowers on a spike, from the time the spike is 2 inches, until it is 8 inches, the temperature must remain consistantly between 65 degrees and 77 degrees. Day and night difference is not involved. This commercial grower gets the phals as 4 to 6 inch bare root plants from Taiwan. He pots them in 4 inch pots and grows them on for about 6 months, at which time they go into 6 inch pots. He then keeps the benches of phals he wants to spike under plastic with an air conditioner (on 24 hours a day) at each end until the spikes are 8 inches tall (approximately 6 weeks). He then moves them out until they have 4 or 5 flowers open, then delivers them to jobbers. Believe me this works !! I spiked about 300 phals I was growing under lights one year - all seedlings -- all novelty -- I gave 290 of them away and to fund raisers for charity. Prior to that I grew only in a greenhouse but I lost not one bud in my air conditioned light room. He also did a study on why that happens -- I wish I could find the study but this little article sums it up very well

There was a recent discussion on this at another orchid forum with photos of two very different Phal flowers that you would definitely assume were from different plants. They weren't. The conclusion reached was that since that Phal flowered both in the summer and in the winter, the difference in temperature during the two seasons was responsible for a drastic change in appearance. Many others on that forum had noticed the same thing over the years with some of their Phals. Chances are excellent that your Phal will revert to its 'normal' coloration if it blooms again this winter. Good luck!