Some of the spring flowering "cattleyas" will form a sheath that will appear empty and even go brown and appear dead till late winter early spring when the buds start to grow.

If you provide a plant name maybe someone will know the flowering season.

Thank you for taking the time to answer Arthurm! My orchid is
Blc. Amy Wakasugi 'Yamanashi'(Lc. Bonanza x Heron's Ghyll)

Any and all info would be greatly appreciated!!

And some of the sheaths will remain empty. Just leave it alone, the truth will come out. If it is indeed empty, don't get rid of the plant, occasionally they do that.

Nick

Yep, sometimes the sheaths will go all brown and crusty- but then they start filling out and bloom for you. And yet others (I'm looking at YOU, Rhyncolaelia digbyana) will give you blind sheath after blind sheath- when everybody else in the club who had a division of the same monster plant has had blooms and you get another blind sheath and another.... and then right about when you are ready to give it away or feed it to the deer it actually blooms.

Moving it real close to the garbage cans usually stops them from doing that.

Nick

You all are too funny....of course, I did that with my passion vine (threatened to throw it in the garbage) and it busted out in bloom that year! Hmmm, could be something to it!
Thanks everyone, you guys are a big help!! And good for a laugh!

I keep a Database of a local Orchid Society Benching results and sadly i have to report that the orchid in question flowers in February or March here (about latitude 34 South). Count back six months and you get for the Northern Hemisphere August or September. Maybe orchids do different things in Zone 5.