I think the operative phrase is "before I bought the plant". Keep it watered and the light level up and it will flower. Sometimes Vandas can blast buds if the temperature gets too low, so that is a possibility. Vanda species are more sensitive than hybrids and Ascocenda hybrids usually don't blast if they remain in the same conditions as they had when they initiated the spike. Slow is good, spike-wise, because that usually goes with long-lasting flowers.

The easiest way is to open a free Photobucket.com account. Upload you pictures there. You do not need to re-size them. Copy the html line beneath each photo and paste here in the message portion of the post. You can paste multiple pictures within the message.

Hello Bill, The plant came with good roots protected with moist spagnum moss and no soil. The stem was packed around with newspapers and the tip showing a rather limp inflo,also half way down stem was a blue tape which I thought was part of the protective wrapping. As I began removing it I could see it was to protect a graft (which I hadn't been told of )but I continued to remove the tape because I thought that would maybe strangle the stem as it expanded when growing. My query is that the graft has left a line shaped like a V and I wondered if I should put the tape back on? Thanks Hazel.

Hi Hazel & Gill. I haven't seen either of you around lately. I hope all is well. I usually get very good germination from Pride of Barbados and the larger Royal Poincianna. They always look terrible when I move them but recover. Mine drop their foliage when the temps drop (I keep it in the 50's at night in the greenhouse during the winter) but it grows back when it warms up. The problem is that I usually end up forgetting about them and they freeze outside. This year I gave my saplings away before I ended up killing them. I've kept POB and RP's started in the fall/winter in the greenhouse in 4" pots until it was warm enough to move them outside. They get somewhat root bound but take off when I transplant into larger containers. Since it's cool at night in the GH they are dormant and don't put on much growth, if any. My plumies didn't bloom well this year. We had such a long cold spring they broke dormancy almost a month later then average. I'm storing half of them bareroot this winter. I had 30 pots and they were just taking up way too much space. Hopefully they'll survive. If they do I'll store all of them bareroot next year. Have a happy holiday and New Year.