phal withering after 30 minute drive!

[gamistriotis]

Need help with a new phal i purcased yesterday.Huge flowers! Loved it. Put it in my car and drove home, sadly hitting saturday traffic.Despite the fact that the air conditioning was on when I reached home it looked like this...Any suggestion?

[Val]

1) Phalaenopsis orchids need air relative humidity of 50%-80%. If you carried your Phal from the shop to your car through hot and dry air, even for 5 minutes, that could have been a shock. (Hot and humid air shouldn't be a problem, though.)

2) Phalaenopsis orchids don't like cold drafts. The air conditioning is just that, especially in such a small space as a car. On top of this, air conditioning dries the air. Shock again.

3) Same as #1 above, when carrying your Phal. from the car to your home.

The flowers are not going to recover, but the plant will survive given good conditions.

I'm seeing 2 yellow things in photo #4, which I don't like. Could you post a close-up photo?

Roots look OK. They seem to have been watered recently. You shouldn't water them again until they look white/silvery (which means they are dry).

[gamistriotis]

Thanx. Too bad because they were amazing...should I leave the spike?
The yellow things are old flowers that I did not remove...

[Val]

Leave the spike. If the plant feels ok, it might flower again on the same spike. If the spike begins to dry, you can cut it.

Glad to hear that the yellow things are not leaves.

Losing some flowers is not a tragedy. Just take care of the plant and it will rebloom for you again and again.

[RosieC]

Agree with everything Val has said. So sorry you lost the flowers, it's always a danger when changing the environment. Give it good care and it should do well and flower again for you.

[Kelo]

I think people generally don't recognise that plants need to be covered when transporting them from one place to another and just how much cover they need. I find that the higher the difference in conditions the harder and faster the damage will be.

[WhiteRabbit]

blooms frequently wither from environmental change - I suspect the car ride was a big change - especially the a/c - but as others have said, I would expect the plant itself to be fine