Phalaenopsis NOID 2

A thread on Orchid Board about NOID Phalaenopsis pictures got me to pull down my second oldest orchid for a quick couple of pictures this morning. Whilst it was down, I noticed that the aerial roots were looking sad, going brown/black on the tips. I've been meaning to repot this plant for a very long time, but it's been pretty much constantly in bloom since we got it, and we didn't want to risk stressing it out with a repot. Thinking it might have gotten over-fertilised, I gave it a quick soak in RO water - but the water was pouring through so slowly I didn't like it one bit, so I decided "never mind the flowers, it needs new medium, now". I pulled it out, and virtually all the roots in the sphagnum were dead - it had quite an impressive root system at one time...The moss was really tightly packed in there, and I guess that lead to the demise of all the roots :(

It's now in bark (which I prefer to sphagnum for plants which don't like being constantly moist).I think I can save it with some TLC...

Anyway, some pictures. As I had wet hands, I didn't actually take any of the sad looking roots or re-potting process, but we have (happily) some flowers to look at... Amazing to think that such a sad plant will still happily bloom and put on a fairly good show - I guess it's a last ditch effort to pass on some genes!

Close-Up

The sad orchid at the back left,
and the double spike one I wrote about previously in front

Amusingly, when we were standing in the check-out queue at Woolworths in PE to buy this orchid, the Afrikaans lady behind us remarked "Wow, that's such a beautiful plant! Imagine how beautiful Jesus must be!". We shuffled about nervously and did the "smile at the crazy lady" thing.