Brown tips on oncidium with black spots

[alaina]

Hi,
I just recently started having trouble with my oncidium. One by one I have had leaf tips turn brown and get spots on the end. I thought maybe it needed more water, but the leaf shown here was green yesterday and I watered and then today realized the leaf turned brown. The last times this happened I cut down to healthy leaf tissue and put cinnamon on the wound. I would blame it on the fertilizer, but I did not use fertilizer yesterday, just tap water. I do not have trouble with 99% of my orchids with the tap so I don't think it is the water. Any ideas? Orchid seemed okay otherwise and just put off some new growth. Also, I did not water the leaves or the plant, just around it.
Thank you!

[claypot]

Orchids react very slowly to any cultural or environmental changes, so whatever you did to your plant in the last few days is very unlikely indeed to be the cause of your problem. Orchids are also extremely light feeders so maybe over feeding or suspect water quality either some while ago or over a prolonged period might be showing now. I assume the brown is dry rather than soggy, so maybe your plant has been burned by being too close to sunny glass....or even burned by being too close to cold windows. Don't forget too, that all plants discard leaves from time to time so maybe this is just natural wastage especially as you say that new growth is appearing. If that new growth produces clean leaves you have no worries.