Purple can be pretty normal for many orchids, and many plants. Looks like it's a hybrid with undetermined parentage but probably one of its heritage has tendency to turn purple. Some species have more a tendency than others and it is mainly from higher light... but also cold can have to do with it, and sometimes heat probably in relationship to light (applies to various plants besides orchids, succulents for example). anyway, in general the darker purplish pigmentation is actually an adaptation to protect cells from too much light but still allow for photosynthesis, and/or has relationship to photosynthesizing different kinds of light waves (ie different color light waves, too much to explain at moment).
When a plant gets too much light it's a different look, like scalding, platinum whitening of leaves- basically killing off of photosynthesizing cells. After that it can look like various things... browning, yellowing, but usually starts off as the whitening scalding. You certainly don't want that, so once purple starts showing you don't want much more than that.
worth noting some plants/orchids naturally have purple pigmentation even in conditions that aren't necessarily high light. However, in shade most plants that exhibit purple or any other color will turn more green in low if not very low light, which is a sign it probably isn't making enough energy in that level to flower. this tends to be a darker green, as mentioned.
|
Linear Mode
