Sonja

As for hanging spikes I mean not extremes like on the mossy tree in the orchid house of the botanical garden, just a topheavy bendy shape like my two other orchids assume when they bloom.
Perhaps part of the secret is just that with the orange one it's still the spikes from the store, which where expertly trained. My own never are perfect, I am after all just a housewife that did read a few tutorials but still breaks out into cold sweat when having to set a clamp to a fresh spike or cut off a dying one , not a florist training young houseplants to sticks to encourage perfect growth every day. What I produce is essentially some wild "S" between two support sticks with the last clamp set below the lowest node that seems to produce a bud, or above the branch on the dead end of the former previous inflorescence, always hoping the flower will forgive my clumsy tries to keep it upright somehow -- LOL
The orange orchid just came with the most exact spikes, you can almost not tell them from their independant standing blackish wooden support sticks. The two other looked in their store form not quite as wild as they do today but both where a bit more relaxed trained to some "H"form from dark green plastic. They tended at once to branch off horizontally after the first bloom and then bow down with the new inflorescences on the same spike base. The one spike of the two the orange one sported since it;s days in the store meanwhile just turned pale yellow and stopped blooming, never branching at all. The other got a few new buds right now, still on top and very far above the pot, and in the base seems something new that could be a spike forming, not an air root, but it is only 5mm above ground now.