ideal phalaenopsis leaf color!

[Shadeflower]

ok I know worst time to post this topic or maybe a good time to get swept under the carpet?
I have sort of made my conclusions already but my conclusions stump me....

So this is all about phal leaf color. What leaf color shows that a plant is healthiest? A dark green shiny leaf or a dull lime green color?

In order for anyone to get a good idea of what sort of colors we are talking about you need to watch one of Rick L's video's showing some phals he treated with magnesium.
You will see some dull lime green leaves pre-treatment and some dark shiny leaves post treatment. To give you a good idea. Or just skip to the 15 minute mark where they are all in the frame and have a quick look:

Orchids............magnesium def in Phals - YouTube

Ok so this is what stumps me. I have come to the conclusion by now that ultra dark green leaves are a symptom of a problem. Shiny leaves mean the leaves are reflecting light away from them as a defense mechanism like purpling of leaves. This is my personal opinion by now...
Leaves that absorb light are healthy and leaves that look all shiny and glossy on the pictures are in fact reflecting light like a mirror when they should be absorbing it to photosynthesize!

So... why did the leaves go all shiny after rick fed a lot of magnesium? And more importantly is he right that dark shiny green leaves are a sign of good health or were his leaves fine all along?

Well, I believe like I said shiny leaves are not a good sign. It has taken me several years to come to this conclusion and I could be wrong. Leaves should be absorbing light.
So, ok lets say I'm right, why did Rick's leaves turn shiny after feeding magnesium.

I believe it caused a Phosphorous deficiency(increasing magnesium directly increases the demand for phosphorous in plants). A phosphorous deficiency is responsible for darker than usual leaves. I'm guessing the shinyness is also a symptom. As people probably noticed on my pictures over the past year my leaves were getting darker and shinier and initially I thought it was a good sign, people even told me how good my leaves looked but in hindsight this was only because they had darkened up so much thus even hiding other "blemishes" just by being excessively dark.

If you look at another one of Rick's video' and compare the leaves of his Cattleya in this video he this time correctly identifies the problem as a Phosphorous deficiency, all the symptoms including the dark leaves are symptoms I have observed. Now taking what I have just been talking about if you look at his Cattleya leaves "I bet you something looks familiar". What do all his dark phosphorous deficient Cattleya leaves have? That's right leaf shine. Reflecting the light from the leaves.

Orchids............Cattleya Phos Deficiency - YouTube

Ok do I still have an audience? I hope so lol.

So like I mentioned I have been following the tips of other youtubers and trying out Rainmix for the first time this year and I was optimistic everything would improve, initially my leaves got a great shine to them, they looked great and I thought things were good, till I noticed that actually leaves were starting to not grow as long, they were starting to grow shorter, leaf purpling was creeping up in places, older leaves got far darker than new growth making me think the new growth had a problem but it was the old growth that was the problem.
I have compiled a list of about 10 more symptoms I have observed but Rick has covered a lot in his video.

Anyway so here I am trying to get my phals back on track after I watched them darken up for the past year....... Yes the picture is a bit shocking! And it has been hard to a) come to the conclusion I have come which contradict a ton of magnesium related video's online
and b) stick to my treatment with my phals growing very nearly yellow looking at times (compared to the darker leaves)
But I have stuck with it and my initial observations are:
1) leaves are no longer growing stunted
2) growth has accelerated
3) flowering has increased
4) root growth has improved
5) leaf issues (weak plant syndrome) have dissapeared.

So early days still and like said I am a bit stumped by my conclusions and the pictures are not very convincing but I think you can see although the latest leaf looks a bit weird it is actually growing very long, it's just what a transition from a dark leaf to a lime green leaf looks like I think...

But I would love to hear what others think a healthy phal leaf should look like. Was Rick right or am I on to something?

ps ignore the white leaf spots, thats previous light damage.

you can see on my leaf the dark bit is shiny and as it transitions to the lime green the leaf shine dissapears.

[jcec1]

My phalaenopsis all grow under the same conditions, some are shiny, some are dull, some are light, dark, purple or silvery. I assumed it was their parentage or species - they all perform well enough for me not to worry about them.

[rbarata]

I have some Phals with mottled leaves.

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by rbarata

I have some Phals with mottled leaves.

Like Phal schilleriana and Phal stuartiana... if they had solid green shiny leaves I'd be worried.

[Shadeflower]

found a thread from 8 years ago showing perfectly what I'm on about.

As you can see from the comments it's just genetics, nothing to worry about but the last comment does suggest it happens very often when the plant gets weakened from losing roots for example.

Phal leaves turning dark green/purple, healthy otherwise - Orchid Board - Most Complete Orchid Forum on the web !

I couldn't have found a better example tbh. I think the lighter phal color is the better color

And notice they were both grown in the same light and the darker one had yellow flowers. Ie you would expect darker leaves with darker flowers.

Well I am happy. Discovered another flower spike tonight.
Happy new year.

[Shadeflower]

Hello fellow OBer's,
so I'm still trying to get the right answers from my orchids but it is sooo slow so here I am seeing what the professionals reckon.

So far this video I am watching is very good. He explains in great detail the symptoms of a N,P and K deficiency.

He compares different ratios like 1-1-1 and 2-1-3 and 2-1-1 etc.

Like he says it takes the orchids roughly 8 months to show a change after changing fertilizer! I'll be an old man by the time I figure it out lol.

The thing is although his knowledge on the subject is clearly very good he makes a lot of conclusions that high N is better.

Based on several pictures (I would suggest you pause and study the pictures) He shows about 5 pictures in quick succession within 1 minute.

So unfortunately he only uses one plant per experiment and I don't like this because as one can see on some pictures a higher dose actually gives better results but a lower dose does too and the plant in between did worse (on some pictures) - this indicates that in those plants some of them were naturally genetically superior and can skew the results terribly if one only uses one plant per experiment.

I was wondering what others think on the matter.

My theory is that the best ratio is something like 2-1-3 or in that region but he argues 4-1-6 results in the best plant (if you compare the pictures)

But ultimately they all flower.... is a much taller spike beneficial? I prefer shorter spikes. So many things to consider!

The video is quite informative but I went in with a skeptical mind and to me only using one orchid per experiment is not very reliable. What do you think?
We all know genetics plays a big role. Sometimes one plant will just naturally be stronger than another one and grow one more leaf. If we look at his experiments we might conclude it was what they were being fed but there is more to it isn't there.

I haven't finished watching the video yet, lot of waffling and although it concludes the opposite to what I conclude it's still a good video. So should I go back to feeding more N? That is the big question. Like you know me I will perform similar tests on an equally small scale as in the video and I'll get some more answers on the matter in the future

Yao-Chien Alex Chang: Mineral Nutrition of Phalaenopsis, with focus on nitrogen - YouTube

conclusions after watching the video:
-I will have to watch it again
- it's an overall fertilizer schedule of up to the past year previously that will affect flowering.
- too much N during spiking can delay flowering by up to 9 days in compact phals
-All plants are from tissue culture which addresses the genetic factor
- Even though a high N content is important, K is equally as important. P to a lesser degree as long as there is no deficiency
-the form of N should be mainly nitric Nitrogen, Orchids do not like Urea or Ammonia much.
-although he does not mention this urea is actually an immobile form of N whereas nitric Nitrogen is mobile and as the video shows the plant does actively store and redistribute N so that might explain why it does not like urea!

And finally we still have a lot to figure out.

[estación seca]

There are Phal species with many different leaf colors. Likewise hybrids naturally have different leaf colors. There isn't one proper leaf color.

[Shadeflower]

right but you certainly can change your leaf color! The evidence can be seen in my picture at the top ^

But after watching the video again I have concluded that most of the plants he compared look very very similar.

I tried to pick out the best one out of the 12 he showed.(actually its only 10, he shows the plant fed 200-100-300 x3 times as the same plant..)

It's so difficult, some have great looking roots, some have lots of leaves but the leaves grew stunted, then some flower the best then there is one plant that has flowers that are double the size of the others.

Which one do I pick to be the best??

Inconclusive!

But after changing things at mine I am seeing faster growth so after all this for myself at least I have concluded it must have been the micronutrients that have made the biggest difference.

My conclusion after all this is that orchids need a similar amount of micronutrients to other house plants but they need 4 times less macro nutrients.

So this poses a problem. Either you feed enough micro's and 4 times too much macro's as a result or you feed the right amount of macro's but 4 times too little micro's.

So the solution is to use lots of seaweed extract or a fertilizer containing only micronutrients.

Alright that's the last on this now for this year I hope although I can't make any promises.

Who here wouldn't want to grow an orchid like this?

Gawler Districts Orchid Club Inc. - A lovely Phalaenopsis with more than 50 blooms, beautifully grown by Lorraine Micallef Photo © Lorraine Micallef Gawler Districts Orchid Club Inc. #orchid #orchids #Gawler #art #botany #Botanical #AdelaideOrchids #

edit: ok I will just throw one more out there for you
Why You Should Foliar Feed Orchids (& How To Do It Right)

[Ray]

I agree with others that there is no one “perfect” color, but -yes - leaf color can change. Light levels are one significant driving force (and more is not necessarily better for deep understory plants like phalaenopsis).

I absolutely disagree with the comment that shiny leaves reflect sunlight. Dull-appearing leaves are common among plants grown with relatively high mineral content water. Switch them over to RO and don’t overdo the fertilizer and many of them will become noticeably shinier with time.

[jcec1]

Originally Posted by Shadeflower

right but you certainly can change your leaf color! The evidence can be seen in my picture at the top ^

But after watching the video again I have concluded that most of the plants he compared look very very similar.

I tried to pick out the best one out of the 12 he showed.(actually its only 10, he shows the plant fed 200-100-300 x3 times as the same plant..)

It's so difficult, some have great looking roots, some have lots of leaves but the leaves grew stunted, then some flower the best then there is one plant that has flowers that are double the size of the others.

Which one do I pick to be the best??

Inconclusive!

But after changing things at mine I am seeing faster growth so after all this for myself at least I have concluded it must have been the micronutrients that have made the biggest difference.

My conclusion after all this is that orchids need a similar amount of micronutrients to other house plants but they need 4 times less macro nutrients.

So this poses a problem. Either you feed enough micro's and 4 times too much macro's as a result or you feed the right amount of macro's but 4 times too little micro's.

So the solution is to use lots of seaweed extract or a fertilizer containing only micronutrients.

Alright that's the last on this now for this year I hope although I can't make any promises.

Who here wouldn't want to grow an orchid like this?

Gawler Districts Orchid Club Inc. - A lovely Phalaenopsis with more than 50 blooms, beautifully grown by Lorraine Micallef Photo © Lorraine Micallef Gawler Districts Orchid Club Inc. #orchid #orchids #Gawler #art #botany #Botanical #AdelaideOrchids #

edit: ok I will just throw one more out there for you
Why You Should Foliar Feed Orchids (& How To Do It Right)

Meh, 40ish blooms on just the one spike and fed bog standard Miracle-Gro - they need to up their game.