Closer shot. The larger bud is the "main" thing going from NW to SE, with the little nubbin in bottom right corner.

With my hand for scale.

I can't wait to see what develops! =)

*grabs popcorn*

Planto

Still "early days", time will tell. I think, from memory, mine only ever had one flower at a time.

OMG, the suspense...! New pic when it looks different enough to bother...

TY for the responses ;)

Please correct me if this is wrong, but wouldn't the only other explanation be that it's splitting into 2 tops? Can a Philo like this start branch out & making 2 new leaves at a time?

This post was edited by purpleinopp on Wed, Oct 29, 14 at 12:06

The smaller one now has some separation between its' tip and the petiole from which it is growing.

Moving back a bit, tall new leaf about to unroll on the left, 2 flowers (?) forming to the right of that.

A little farther back, 3 new leaves (coming from 3 separate plants) about to unroll to the left...

Having never kept a BC before,I really don't know but I have to ask...when the leaf that is about to unroll was first emerging,did it look remarkably different from these two?

Yes, sorry if I'm not capturing it in pics. There's a leaf unrolling, then these 2 protuberances are coming from the petioles of the 2 previous leaves. I cut away the new leaf's petiole since it started to break out today.

Bending the leaf to the left a bit, there's the tiny sliver of the next new leaf in there, with the fatter, shorter protuberance behind and to the right. The other protuberance is to the right of those. Are these pics better?

Better than better...they're gorgeous!

Well that cuts it...what else COULD they be but inflorescences? Now here's a crazy thought...if they are staggered just right,and the first is done with it's male flowers while the second is just putting them on,maybe the female flowers in the first will become active in time to get pollen from the second...if that makes any sense.

Still too soon for an update,huh?

Sorry Purp...don't mean to be annoying,..just dying to see what's going on with your phil.

I think I said above, the pot has 4 individual plants in it. The 3 biggest ones just unrolled a new leaf per plant, very colorful, but the big bud doesn't look different yet. I went to Dollar General yesterday for rubbing alcohol to clean this plant (it's got sooty mold on some of the leaves from sitting under trees with it) but they were out. So, sorry the older leaves don't look so great, that's why.

Oh my,no...I wasn't going to say anything snarky about the leaves...truthfully,I hadn't even noticed. lol

These guys sure are relaxed when it comes to flowering...run on a terrible schedule for those of us who lack patience.

I guess I'm gonna have to get better at that.

My darned "moonlight" croaked on me months ago and my erubescens is hopefully recovering from a horrible decline in spite of having been outside for most of the growing season. It's been an awful year for most of the phils in my collection. The only ones that suffered no ill effects were my bips. If something had happened to them,I'da just died!

Thanks for the update,and sooty or not,that's such a beautiful plant!

They will look like the blooms on a peace lily, only not so fancy.

They haven't opened yet...just you wait...they will be fancy and then some!

All aroids have a peace lily type flower of some sort or another. A spadix with a spathe wrapped around it.

Run an image search on "philodendron flower" and you will see what I mean.

You will get a number of different images,but one for black cardinal wasn't to be found(by me anyway),so needless to say,I'm jazzed about seeing these things bloom.

Purp has a knack for getting plants to bloom.
If anyone can make this thing do it,..it's her!

Well There it IS!

Spectacular job!!

Now I wonder if just as an experiment,you might paintbrush a bit of the pollen onto some aluminium foil and keep it in the fridge 'til the female flowers are ready.

Crazier still,the pollen could be used on another type of blooming philo(should you have one ready).

Regardless of WHAT you do next,this is frikkin great!

Thanks so much for sharing! =)

TY! It's the 3rd incidence of Philo flower I've ever seen in person. The others were on a giant hanging 'Pink Princess' plant at a garden center, and on the other 2 plants that I didn't choose in favor of this pot with 4 individuals when buying this one. That gave reasonable hope my plant would do it too, but as we all know, reasonable hope and reality often never meet.

IDK enough about inserting myself into the pollination process to consider it. Interesting thought though.

Might be worth looking into. ;)

Nice work Purp! It would be interesting to see if you could get anything out of them.

One of my Philodendron 69686's bloomed a couple of years ago. It is believed to be a sterile wild hybrid so I didn't bother to try anything with it but there were three inflorescence(s) one after the other.

That's lovely, Dellis. TY for sharing!!

I think that was about as exciting as my flower is going to get. The spadix is turning brown. Hopefully the plant will be happy enough inside to complete the other bloom. It's a few inches above the floor on a cookie tin, in our warmest room.

Here's the whole plant, with the leaves finally cleaned off. Looks like it got a little sunburned getting its' plain water rinse before coming in a few weeks ago. Oops, it was cloudy when I did that, but you can see some sunburn happened. She is much more shiny in person, the camera insists on making her look dull.

How's the second inflorescence coming along,Purp? Are you letting the first one drop off on it's own or did you cut it?

Danny,do you have pics of the 69686 in it's entirety? I heard that like many(all?) climbing phils it goes through various stages in appearance on it's way to maturity.

Here is a leaf from 2011, That is a one gallon bottle to the left for a size reference. You can see an inflorescence growing to the left and under the leaf.

I don't have any pictures of it as it currently is. It is in my studio so next time I go over there I'll try to remember to take one although now it is mostly a bare stem about four or five feet long with a couple feet of stem with leaves on the end. Which I think is a natural growth pattern for wild type philodendrons.

Purp; Just cause you don't know about manual pollination is hardly a reason not to try. It would be interesting to see what you could do with this plant.

Thanks Danny! Hope you remember...it would be great to see it!

Purp,I know you're a busy girl and all,but I do hope that Danny's gentle nudging(and mine)will encourage you to give it a shot. :)