Brand new Phal buds withering!

[alannanoelle]

My brand new phal that I just bought 3 days ago seems to be in distress. Two of the blooms on it are already withering away, and all of the new buds that were green on Sunday are all turning yellow. One of them seems to be withering already, and it is no where close to opening. What could the problem be? Please help!!!

[Cookiemonster]

Okay you just got this three days ago-
there could be many factors involved.
First of all have you unpotted the plant to see the roots if they are in good condition or if you might have some sort of a bug problem.
Secondly, some the buds look blasted either by too much sun, stress, or temperature change of sorts.
More information is needed.
If you choose to keep it repot and see what going on downstairs--
let us know!

[alannanoelle]

I have not repotted it at all to see how things are. I am sure there is some temperature change from moving it to my home, but other than that, there shouldn't be an issue with sun or stress, other than possibly the car ride home?

[priz_m]

Alanna, bud blast due to a change in the environment is very frequent on phals. It is a bummer though, because it had so many of them unopened.

Cookiemonster is right, you might want to repot to see what is going on "below the belt" and since your blooms are dropping already, you have nothing to lose.

Keep us posted

[alannanoelle]

What a bummer! I'll repot it tonight and see what's going on down there.

[priz_m]

Yeah, Unfortunately bud blast cannot be undone

Look at it on the bright side:
a) There's 2 healthy blooms
b) There's 3 buds that may make it through
c) Phals are some of the species that re-bloom from the old spike so once it settles on its new environment it might reward you with a new set of flowers

With orchids it is never all lost Cheer up

[camille1585]

A good many of the phals that I have bought in spike/bloom have had varying degrees of bud blast within few days. Most lose one or two buds, and a few have dropped nearly everything. They can't tolerate the slightest change in conditions! But if the roots are fine, you'll have a healthy phal that might spike again soon!

[bonsai1504]

i lost two spikes on a phal just because i didn't give it enough humidity. i bumped up the humidity and all of the other non-blasted buds were fine. i've also found that lack of water causes bud blast.

[RosieC]

I didn't know it was a common problem till I saw this thread, but I can confirm that I've seen the same thing and my Phals were actually fine.

It's disapointing isn't it.

My last two got bud blast soon after I bought them, and some of the flowers dropped. Luckily some of them survived for a couple of weeks or so.

I was worried at the time that they were unhealthy plants... but I didn't do anything special (I didn't read OB then so I didn't know WHAT to do), just looked after them as I usually do and now both of them look really healthy with a lot of new roots, several new leaves each, and one has a new spike just starting to produce buds and the others has a short start of a spike.

[alannanoelle]

Thanks for all the input! I'm going to repot it tonight and see what is going on underneath. Hopefully everything is just fine!