Help - Is my Phal dying? Brown curling leaves

[Lauren2402]

Hi

I've tried googling my Phal's symptoms but no luck so I was hoping someone will be able to help.

I got my orchid at Christmas and up until a couple of weeks ago it was doing just fine. I'm watering it once a week but I'm wondering if this is too much or too little.

The first symptom was the leaf with a brown end and in the last few days a few of the other leaves have started curling at the end. The brown leaf is very soft and wrinkly.

Any ideas please?

Many thanks

[jcec1]

It may be either heat damage perhaps from a radiator, of cold damage from a draught etc. However, it looks like your orchid is in a glass vase, this will cause problems and you will end up with root rot. Get it in a pot with drainage holes, use chunky bark as your potting media, and if you want put it in a decorative pot. When potting up remove any rotting rots which will be soft and squishy and probably a brownish colour, white roots are fine. I water mine once a week,and empty any water from the decorative pot after an hour or so.

[camille1585]

Ditto on the repotting if that pot doesn't have drainage holes. In any case it looks like it would need a new mix anyway, the current one looks quite fine and soil like. As to watering, go by the color of the roots that you can see through the side of the pot! Green roots means that there's still enough moisture, and once they turn silvery white again, it's time to water.

As to the leaf issue, has the plant been sitting near a window and that leaf was touching? Whatever the cause, what I would advise is to cut off the afflicted part of leaf, making sure to take a good chunk of healthy leaf with it to make sure you got it all. Then if you have some on hand, you can dust the cut with cinnamon powder to seal it up. The other leaves look healthy to me.

[lotis146]

I agree with the others. And FYI wrinkling leaves typically means the plant is dehydrated. If the roots are bad then it won't be getting enough water. If the roots are good then you're not watering enough.

Also base your choice of medium on your watering habits. For example, I under-water chronically so really chunky bark isn't so good for me when the plant is rather thirsty. But if you over-water chunky bark will be your friend. There are plenty of mixes using bark, moss, perlite, charcoal, and more to varying degrees. Good luck, keep us posted.

[ramonypony]

Looks to me like symptoms of salt buildup, because the other leaves don't look dehydrated. It's in a glass with what looks like some type of peat mix, or decomposed bark-- very bad combination for a phal. They like lots of air around their roots. Is there a drainage hole at the bottom? If not, salt would definitely be building up in the pot since it can't be flushed away. I would repot right away into a pot with holes and some sort of bark mix and chunk that old medium.

[Lauren2402]

Hi all

Many thanks for your really quick replies - sorry, I didn't realise I had so many of them! I will check the forum and not rely on email notifications next time.

I took the advice and repotted the plant - there were a few unhappy looking roots so I took them off too. The brown leaf has slowly lost colour and is now white, however now I'm concerned about all the other leaves! These are all turning brown around the tips, any ideas??

Further background:

- the phal has lost most of its flowers. I'm hoping this isn't significant though as they've been on since xmas and there looks like there are lots of new places they might spring up

- at the time of my original post, the phal was on a windowsill above a radiator, but I moved it to another windowsill which wasn't above a radiator

- the potting mixture is now bark compost with some nutrient bits in it (I bought it from a site which said specifically for orchids...)

- I'm watering once a week. I can see the roots better now I've repotted and they never go white - should i be letting them dry out more?

Thanks for your help in advance! I've attached some further pictures, although it's hard to show the light brown on the leaf tips.

Lauren

[wintergirl]

Your plant looks pretty healthy. The leaf tip problem might be from when it was in front of the radiator. Rather than water once a week, you should watch the roots. Let them get silver, then water and they will get green again. Phals like to dry out between watering. The flowers do drop off over time but I bet you will have buds on your nice green flower spikes in the near future.

[Lauren2402]

Hi wintergirl

Thanks for your reply!

The brown tips on all the leaves are a more recent thing in the last couple of weeks, and appeared a little while after I moved it from the radiator. Could it be from over watering? I'll make my watering less frequent now that I can see the roots better and make sure I check the roots first.

My first orchid might as well be my first child with my over worrying and not knowing what to do!

Thanks

Lauren

[Optimist]

This seems to be a typical phal drained pot in a glass vase. No problem, as long as the drainage is good. I would cut off that damage with a sterilized razor knife, and use cinnomon as a stiptic If and only if that area is spreading.

I have several orchids with one or two funky leaves, this includes burns, frost bite, animal tooth marks, and they are still chugging away.

[Lauren2402]

Yes that's right - there is a drainage clear pot in the original glass vase. When I water it, I take the pot out of the glass and sit it in the sink for a while so that the water runs straight through and doesn't sit in the bottom of the glass pot giving me the same problem as before.

I didn't think the damage was spreading, although all leaves are turning brown now. I'll cut off the damaged leaf since this won't cause harm to the plant? Although I'm not sure it's necessarily spreading? It was like that for a while before all the remaining leaves turned brown. In particular, the new brown areas are on the tips underneath the leaves whereas the one funny leaf as per my original post just appeared much quicker and on the top. Or this could have been because I was paying less attention to the plant at the time given I thought it was healthy until this popped up...!