There's a white thingy (fungus?) on my Phal!

[whitetshirtguy]

Hello, guys...
I hope you're not tired of helping me with my messed up Phal yet.
I have just repotted it a week ago because the media was very decomposed and the roots were rotting. I desribed the repotting here.

I am using a pencil to check if it needs watering, and since I was sticking the pencil to the media kind of often I was afraid of accidentally damaging the roots while doing it, so I decided to just leave the pencil there and only take it of to check how wet it is. Was that a bad idea?

The thing is that when I took the pencil out and checked it yesterday there was a white thing sticking to it. It looked like something between flour, cotton and a spider web. There were little dots of it and little fibers.

I thought it could be some sort of fungus, so I googled "white fungus roots" and found this: Mycorrhiza - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The thing on the pencil kind of looked like that one on the first picture in the article, but a little more dense and not so widespread.
I didn't think of taking a picture of it at the time, and just wiped the pencil clean and put it back to it's place. Now today, when I took it out to check again, there was no white thingy anymore.
The Phal is on a clear plastic pot, so I can see a few of the roots on it's walls, and they seem green and tidy as they always did (no white thing).


So... what is that? Is it bad? What should I do!?

Thanks again for all your help,

W.

[whitetshirtguy]

Now searching a little more I have also found this:

"All orchids are myco-heterotrophic at some point in their life cycle. Orchid mycorrhizae are critically important during orchid germination, as orchid seed has virtually no energy reserve and obtains its carbon from the fungal symbiont."
(Orchid mycorrhiza - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Which tranquilizes me a little. So is that normal? Should I not worry?

[Zoi2]

I don't know if the white thing you found was fungus or not, I would watch the plant to see if it appears again.
If your plant is in a clear plastic pot you really don't need a pencil to tell you when to water. When phal roots are silver/white it is time to water, if they're green they have enough water.
Joann

[DSDNYC]

I agree, if you have repotted, removing dead roots and tissue, replanting in bark its time to leave it alone and just watch it. Id err kn tbe side of less water for awhile. If a lot of roots were rotten, the orchid may take some time to rebound. I find that less care is often the best medicine to a problem stemming from too much care- too much water

Good luck

[WhiteRabbit]

could just be small particles from the potting mix on the pencil. I use skewers in my orchid pots, and they sometimes have debris from the potting mix on them - if there's perlite in the mix, that could be the small white stuff

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

They may not be mycorrhizae, idk. The only way to tell is if there was a portion of the root that was inspected under a microscope. If the roots were infected by the orchid's endomycorrhizae, the pelotons of hyphae from the fungi can be seen inside the cells of the roots.

http://www.world-of-fungi.org/Mostly...h/pelotons.jpg

Ectomycorrhizae are usually found on the root's surface.

Mycorrhizae or not, without seeing a photo of the white spots on the pencil, it's difficult to say whether it was a fungus or not. It could be, but it could also be other things too.

If those spots do turn out to be fungus, do understand that it doesn't necessarily mean that they are the species of fungi that form mycorrhizal relationships with the orchid.

[whitetshirtguy]

Today I took the pencil out again to check the situation and there was a little more of the white thing on it. Not as much as the first time, though. Here are a couple of (bad) pics:





Now I took the pencil out once and for all. I think that it being wooden itself and being sticked to the media for too long it could be retaining more moisture than the rest of the bark, causing the fungus(?) to grow on it. I still can't see any sign of the white thing on the roots or anywhere else on the plant or the media. The pencil was the only place I have ever noticed it on.

Besides, when I repotted the Phal I sprinkled the damaged and cut parts of the roots with a lot of cinnamon.

So what do you think? If it actually is a fungus, what should I do?



P.S.: How do you know so much about all this, Philip? When I grow up I want to be just like you!

[Paul Mc]

Cinnamon is only a preventative, it will not all together eliminate issues. You might try a mixture that Ray has on his website where you steep cinnamon in hot water for about an hour, then remove the cinnamon and use the water. Once the water is cool enough, you can pour the water into the mix you are using. However, cinnamon also tends to slow growth (roots, leaves, etc...) so there is a draw back to pouring it directly into the medium as it will stay in the medium.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by whitetshirtguy

Today I took the pencil out again to check the situation and there was a little more of the white thing on it. Not as much as the first time, though. Here are a couple of (bad) pics:





Now I took the pencil out once and for all. I think that it being wooden itself and being sticked to the media for too long it could be retaining more moisture than the rest of the bark, causing the fungus(?) to grow on it. I still can't see any sign of the white thing on the roots or anywhere else on the plant or the media. The pencil was the only place I have ever noticed it on.


So what do you think? If it actually is a fungus, what should I do?

It's fungus. Again, mycorrhizal or not, idk. You'd need to do some lab work to find this out.

Btw, identification of fungi is not easy, and I'm not sure what the methods are for identifying them.

However, with the kind of root damage your Phals have, i wouldn't bother trying to cut a piece of living root to have that inspected under a microscope.

You can either grow the Phals a little drier. Or give them a little more air circulation.

Fungus generally tend to love wet, humid, and stale environments.

I've used cinnamon before, and I didn't really like the results. Don't get me wrong, cinnamon can be very helpful, but my preference was to use other methods of disease control. With this in mind, I don't know too much about the use of cinnamon, and I will defer to others who have much more experience using it properly to tell you how to use it.

Although, I will agree with what Paul Mc had said about cinnamon. It does have growth retardant properties. That's mostly because it has a phytochemical called Cinnamaldehyde.

Here's a Wikipedia article on Cinnamaldehyde:

Cinnamaldehyde - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's a Google Scholar search on articles for Cinnamaldehyde:

cinnamaldehyde - Google Scholar

Originally Posted by whitetshirtguy

P.S.: How do you know so much about all this, Philip? When I grow up I want to be just like you!

Keep in mind, I don't know everything. I do occasionally make mistakes.

But since you asked...

1. Total of 18 yrs experience in orchid growing.

2. Approximately 7 yrs of trolling around on the internet and reading lots of articles by hobbyists, horticulturists, and scientists. Reading posts from other hobbyists experienced or not, on orchid forums help too.

3. Taking a community college course in botany.

4. Training in greenhouse management for Phals. I used to work at a nursery.

5. Once I left school, I didn't just forget the stuff I learned when I was a kid.

6. At one point in time I had approximately 400 to 500 different kinds of orchids in my collection. I currently own over 100 different kinds.

All of this and this is not my career, it's a hobby.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

If you really want to know which group of fungus the orchid has mycorrhizal relationships with...

It's reported to be the group of fungi going under the grouping of Rhizoctonia.

Fungal taxonomy tends to be messy and often times confusing, that's why I worded it the way I did.