I bought this mini phal plant today, it looked a little sad, and I have a weakness for the sad-looking plants. It was marked down, too.

When I got home and pulled it out of the decorative cachepot to check out the roots, it looked pretty bad, and when I tugged it out of the plastic pot to take a closer look, well, it was worse. The bark/soil mix was really wet, there was water in the bottom of the cachepot, and it was so awful I started removing potting mix right away (encouraged to do so because a clump fell off right away, and the roots looked so awful, so I decided to keep going). As a bonus, there was a clump of soggy sphagnum in the center, too.

I know healthy roots are green, but even the green roots on this plant are broken, or really short. Are the yellowed areas doomed? Might they recover if they don't stay soggy? One of the healthiest stretches of root has a yellow section between it and the main plant :( What about all those white spots all over the roots? Are those signs of rot? Or just a normal feature on some phals? (I have two others, neither has the spots, but I'm fairly new to orchids.)

The old mix is history. I cut off the bloom spike and put the plant into a new orchid pot with a mix of bark and perlite - perlite holds moisture really nicely and I've had good luck rooting other plants in it. I'm thinking I should tuck the whole thing into a large plastic bag to keep overall humidity up, too. I also have some bagged sphagnum, so if it looks like all the current roots are totally trashed, I could give that "sphag and bag" I saw in the FAQ a try.

It has pretty flowers (I stuck the spike in a vase), and I'm hoping it will grow new roots if it's kept appropriately humid - one leaf is a bit withered, but most of the foliage looks pretty healthy.

Thanks for any advice.