Hi Ellzeena, I would follow Ray's advice, that procedure can work quite well to save rootless or nearly rootless Phals. I've done it minus the Kelpmax, and with love and lots of patience the plant eventually puts out new roots. Ray answers your question about watering: whenever the medium gets dry. The plastic bag is to maintain humidity around the plant to limit water loss from the leaves. You want to slow the plant's transpiration rate since it doesn't have the necessary roots to take up and replace the water leaving the plant.

The roots a plant puts out are all the same, it is us humans who call them air roots or not based on whether or not they grow into the medium. You can gently guide them into the pot as they grow.

The dead ancient stem can be cut, there's no harm in it. On old Phals I generally remove the section which has no live roots attached to it and leave everything above that point.

Please do try to take a photo. Even if you can't focus up close, a general photo of the plant will already speak a thousand words and help a lot.

TY I appreciate the photos but my orchid is in much worse shape than are yours, it is clinging to life under my close observation. The growth I am seeing appear as "nodules" and I believe they are the beginning of air roots. I simply cannot get close enough to photograph, it's impossible.

The plant was heavily damaged by very bad potting advice and I have been struggling to keep her alive. Her newest leaf is small and curled. She has no roots except for a large air root. I honestly don't know if this plant is going to survive and I've done my best.

Watering is a questionable activity given the fact she has no roots. The rhizome is compromised. I am presently keeping moist moss around the new roots that seem to be appearing and wetting the existing air root every day. If you have any further suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated.

how is the rhizome compromised?

If there is rot on the rhizome cut it of there as any part on the other side of the rot is gone.

if there is a root, it can live. there is not a difference between an air root and a regular root, just how it adapts to the environment. a root that has been in the free air should be kept that way in general but a newly forming root can be put into any conditions that meet the need of the plant and it will adapt, think how these plants can and do grow in pot, mounts and semi hydro and full water...just about acclimatizing.

you seem to want us to tell you some magic way to fix this orchid but without a picture to help see what is wrong, we are just shooting in the dark..even just a picture of the whole plant so we know we are all using the same terminology.

i have a few ancient phals that have long and meandering rhizomes so i think i understand the shape of the plant you are talking about. But if there is a rotted area on the rhizome, it has to be separated and you have to hope there is enough in the healthy part to either rebound or give a keiki to continue the genetics

Most welcome Ellzeena. In that case - definitely follow the recommendations provided by Ray, as his method is going to provide humidity for the orchid - to give it time to hang on ----- with the aim of keeping the green parts alive and not dehydrate at a fast rate. Buy some time for roots to grow.

If you have some mancozeb or something, you could spray some on the plant's leaves and/or roots first, and then put that plant into the life support system (- that maintains adequate humidity).

Definitely some photos - good resolution ones - will be beneficial here.

Hello Ellzeena, I feel your pain! Ray's advice is good, give it a try. Here's my experience with a rootless Phal, and I don't have any pictures either. I tried sphag & bag, misting, soaking, water culture, Kelpmax and fussed with it endlessly for three years. It finally grew one root. Every time I almost threw it out, it showed some small sign of life. Each new leaf was smaller, and it would lose one for every new one, new leaves were about an inch long at its low point.
Last year it had a slightly larger new leaf, two short roots, and I was tired of tending it. I potted it up in bark in a tiny pot, put it in with the other Phals, watered and fed and lighted it the same as the other Phals, and left it alone. It now has three healthy looking 3 inch leaves and is starting another new leaf now. I think it's going to make it! This is one tough little plant.
If you have even one aerial root, it's doing OK. You can cut off the bottom part of the stem, up to where there are roots starting. Don't worry if they are aerial roots, that is OK. Just leave them alone, let them grow, stop spraying and repotting. You can cheer it on, talk to it and play music for it instead.
My most important advice is this: STOP spraying it with chemicals, especially do not spray peroxide on the roots. That may be what killed them originally. It kills plant tissue. You want to protect every single new cell the orchid is trying to grow, and hydrogen peroxide will kill those new cells and stop the growth. You don't need to spray it with anything, just let Ma Nature do her thing.
Sorry this is so long, did I make enough paragraphs? I think your plant can recover. Mine did, but it takes time!
:waving

TY so very much! I only sprayed the hyd. peroxide on the rhyzome since there were thrips and fungus. I did cut the rhyzome back since it was obviously impaired, but there is still some left. I have it in sphagnum moss, its normal medium, and the new leaf is just as YOU described only much more than 1 inch. It is getting a curl in it. It is in its usual window and I am watering it normally even though there are no roots in the medium. Its air root is strong and it is developing what look like air roots along the stem line, three of them.

It's impossible to photograph this, I don't have the equipment to get that close. My other orchids are doing fine, growing new leaves. This orchid almost succumbed and that would have broken my heart but at this point, as you said, it is what it is, I've done all I can. So I am going to continue doing this and see what happens. I am sort of resigned to probably losing this plant but you never know.

As for years: I don't know if I have years, with this horrible virus around, but I'd like the orchid to survive. Thank you so very much for your post. Having had the exact same experience, you zeroed right in on what you did! TY again!

If ALL the roots in the medium are dead, and the only lives roots are outside of the pot, that may be an indication that you need to switch to a different potting medium.

Most people find it extremely difficult to keep a Phal in good health potted in sphagnum moss. I would try a bark mix. Orchiata is a good brand of bark, and you can get it in a lot of places or online. If you want a mixture of things in your medium, then repotme.com has a special type of mix for every type of orchid. They are a little spendy, so you wouldn't want to by from them if you have a ton of plants and go through a ton of media, but if it's just one plant, it might be worth it.

I appreciate your response but you haven't read my messages. This plant has NO roots, it has ONE air root, it was a mature plant with new leaf and spike constantly and potting advice re: size of pot was horrible and almost killed my orchid. She is now struggling to survive for a month or more and I needed to know how to encourage this orchid to continue to live because there are three new roots apparent at the base of the stem, I have no idea if the are air roots or what they are, and I needed to know whether or not to keep her in medium or attempt another method.

Roots aren't predestined to be air roots or substrate roots and they can adapt. I think this is what we're trying to tell you. Maybe it doesn't work in a dense media like sphagnum, but if you pot up roots (air or otherwise) in a porous media (I use orchiata) they do fine. If your plant is trying to push roots, it has life left and is salvageable.

Here's a Phal I repotted a while back, I buried its one remaining air root in bark and I took the photos to commemorate the start of its recovery (it had both crown and root issues hence the cinnamon). It's currently unrecognizable with new leaves and its first spike coming.

Buried former air root:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...e7038f76_z.jpgPhal. NOID recovering from crown and root rot by Alice Abela, on Flickr

First new root going into the substrate
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...4d83d6d2_z.jpgPhal. NOID recovering from crown and root rot by Alice Abela, on Flickr

Here's another Phal, this one lost all of its in pot roots so I just soaked and buried all its air roots and this is a shot taken a year later: they all adapted just fine.
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...5ab3825e_z.jpgPhal. NOID by Alice Abela, on Flickr

There's been a lot of good advice given and there are many options that can be pursued to save your plant. I'd pick the method that seems most doable and give it a try.

I most certainly did read your messages, despite that they are awfully long and difficult to parse, but nothing in the world would help us help us help you more than a picture. It's 2020, every phone has a camera, many of them quite high quality. If you would post a picture, it would be easy to see that the plant only has one air root.