What to Do with Spikes After the Blooms Have Fallen Off

One common question among orchid growers is what to do with the stems or spikes once the flowers have fallen off. Unlike for a lot of other plants, for phalaenopsis orchids, the death of blooms doesn’t necessarily mean the death of the spike from which they flowered. 

Sometimes, an orchid spike will turn the light brown color of a dry, withered twig. Such spikes are indeed dead and should be cut off. But sometimes, the spike remains the same color, shape, and texture as it did when the blooms were on it. Those spikes are still alive, and when the orchid reblooms, it will bloom from those spikes or from new ones that grow out of them.  

The photo below is of one of my phalaenopsis orchids. The red oval shows the remnants of the previous flower spike—you can see that it’s a different color and texture than the rest of the spike and was clearly dead. The yellow circle shows the node from which the new spike started growing (the green circle is another active node). That new spike started growing only 3 months after the flowers from the previous spike died. That’s the fastest I’ve ever had an orchid grow a new spike (I’m not sure why, but I’m not complaining!)

Some of my orchids’ spikes have been around for years. Often, a small section will die back to a node, and the rest of the stem will remain alive. Those spikes often sprout new spikes, sometimes at strange angles. To mimic that natural process, the advice for inducing future blooms on spikes that have lost their flowers is to cut them back a node or two using a sterilized blade, slicing just above the node you want to induce to bloom.

The photo above shows the new spike that grew 90 degrees from the old one I trimmed off

It can look kind of strange to have an orchid with multiple bloomless stems (see mine below). Plant people are often trained to think that if there’s a stem that’s lost all its leaves, it’s in bad shape. But phalaenopsis orchids work differently, more like a tree that regrows its leaves and buds from the same branches each year. 

People who are into orchids for their otherworldly beauty might not appreciate the aesthetic of a flowerless orchid with a bare stem of two. But as with most other things, the more one puts into an orchid, the more one gets out. Provided the plant’s needs are being met, when it blooms again, its blooms will be bigger and more numerous than ever.  

Phalaenopsis are unique for their ability to rebloom from the same spike; they’re the only commonly-owned orchid that can do it. Other orchids always grow new spikes, but phalaenopsis can do both, sometimes even at the same time! On my oldest orchid (below), the front flower spike is the one that grew 90 degrees off an old spike. The spike in back is new and started growing after the front one had already begun to bloom.