dead phal?

[lissie0113]

ok so.... first off i dont have a picture of the problem. i didnt think about taking one before i threw away my plant. but, its been bugging me why it died, so i figured i would still ask you guys if you knew what happened......

several weeks back i had a phal go into spike and bloom.... it had a beautiful display for over a month with no problems, except that it lost one leaf. it wasnt the bottom leaf as is typical for a phal.... it was the middle of 3, which struck me as odd, but the rest of the plant looked great so i thought nothing of it. the leaf had a sort of strange rotted, mottled look to it when it came off, i had a brief thought of crown rot.....

eventually the flowers fell off, the spike dried up and turned brown, so i trimmed it off and repotted. This little guy had the most awesome root system ive ever seen in my planting (which is admittedly limited) but i was really pround of myself. this was about 2 weeks ago. then i go in to water yesterday, and three of the 5 remaining leaves are in some stage of that weird pattern, and i just barely touched one and it fell off at the crown. there were also some little rust colored buggers all around near the crown of the plant. are these some kind of bug, or does it sound like crown rot? or a combo? i was sooooo sad to throw away such awesome roots, and a plant which i have cared for so much (i was my second orchid i ever had, the first one i actually bought myself) i tossed it right away because i didnt want to infect anything else, and all the leaves were pretty much goners.....


any thoughts?

[mehitabel]

Sounds like crown rot to me--or you could call it "stem rot" if it happens lower down. If it's in the crown, the newer leaves go. If it's in the stem, the leaves wherever it is and above that will go.

I've had it happen a couple of times on phals -- the leaves look green, but suddenly fall off, and when you look you can see there's a rot problem where the leaf attached to the stem.

This can happen from the plant not drying off enough before the temperature drops at night. There may be other causes as well. I've suspected cold, but can't prove it.

The "little orange buggers" -- some kind of pest, maybe aphids, maybe scale. The thing is that pests can "smell" a weakened plant and flock to it. So never be surprised to find pests on a dying plant or even a weak one that's recovering.

Prevention is to be more careful that the plant dries off before dusk, and (I think) avoiding big chills. That said, I've had a couple of incidents like that this year and I try pretty hard to avoid wet plants at night and also chills. The bacteria that cause this are opportunistic -- that is, they are always there, and just waiting their chance to explode when conditions are favorable.

They are water bourne, so splashes of water from another plant, or even from a hose used to water with can infect a plant when conditions are right.

Prevention: good air movement is a great preventive. Also helps a plant dry off after watering.

PS some people will say you should have saved it, given it a chance to come back. Like you, when I have a plant like that, I pitch.

[cyngreen]

I've had one this past month with very similar symptoms and it went to heaven as well. I think that mine picked up the crown rot by catching condensation dripping from the ceiling of the greenhouse into the crown of the plant. The new puffer fan (keeps the layers of poly seperate to provide an insulation) pulls air from the outside and I have horrible problems with condensation on the ceiling on the greenhouse dripping on my plants. The old puffer fan pulled from the inside and we did not have such a problem. I have to be very careful watering and we have added extra fans (box fans) to move the air around.

[rschluss]

I went to repot a phal that was packed in sphag. While repotting, the center (top) two leaves fell right off. I pitched the plant.

Two hours later, I felt guilty about pitching it, so I decided to pick it out of my trash and give it a second chance at life as an experiment. I dusted the crown and roots with cinnamon, potted it and and am now hoping that it makes some basal keikis so I can have a multi-crowned plant. I figure if it doesn;t work, it was destined for the trash anyway.

[Brooke]

Did you see "the little rust colored buggers" move? If they were stationary then it was probably fungus spores.

Brooke

[lissie0113]

no i didnt see any moving..... they were super teeny so i just figured they couldve been bugs but i guess ill never know. i was soooo proud of those roots too.....