Is this Fusarium?-phal

[Egrigby]

This is my first orchid. When it started doing poorly, my attempt to save it started my interest in orchids.

I have done everything recommended to save this orchid, and it keeps worsening.

New roots grow, and then die. I thought it was persistent root rot. Then the stem started to blacken from the bottom up. It has been woody for the last inch since I unpotted it the first time. So I trimmed it, soaked it in fungicide, used cinnamon, let it dry and bagged it. It got worse.

So I repotted it again. The bottom lead yellowed and fell off. It now had three working roots totalling about one and half inches and 4 leaves, 3 very dehydrated. Those roots were not looking great.

I pulled it out, there was more black. I soaked it in peroxide, lots of foaming. Then I trimmed the last dead roots and more of the dead base it looked fine, no purple.

I could see black under the sheath of the dead leaf, so I cut it off. There were roots squished under the stalk, and the dreaded purple.

I sucked in a breath and made one more cut. Here it is. Is this Fusarium?

[NYCorchidman]

The presence of purple ring on the cut section of the stem to diagnose Fusarium is used on Cattleyas.

Fusarium can be hard to tell from other diseases on Phalaenopsis, say, Sclerotium, which I believe is a lot more common.

Have a look at this if you have not already.

Orchid Diseases

[Egrigby]

Thank you for the help. The link is very useful.

In the end I let the orchid go. I'm just not experienced enough to treat it, and keep it from infecting my other orchids.

I have given them all a spray of fungicide at preventative dose.

Elaine

[Orchidgirl83]

Cinnamon is good for drying cuts on the stem and leaves, but should be kept off roots. Hydrogen Peroxide; especially full strength, is also not good for roots.

[Egrigby]

I do know to keep cinnamon away from roots due to the desecating action of the spice.

However, I have read and been told to use peroxide, 3% to treat and prevent fungus. Could you please point me to your source so I can educate myself? I am new to plants in general and do not want to harm them. I have gotten physan 20 to use for prevention now, I did not have it last week to treat the phalaenopsis with.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Please do not use hydrogen peroxide as a regular preventative measure for fungal infections. Peroxide kills cells. One dosage is not a big problem. Continually using peroxide will cause some unwanted problems to occur.

If you are a newbie to orchids, I do not recommend buying sick plants to start with. Trying to nurse a sick orchid back to health is incredibly stressful, particularly for a slow growing orchid such as Phalaenopsis!

If you haven't already, please take the time to read the sticky, The Phal abuse ends here., it should provide you with a lot of information on Phalaenopsis growth habits and how they grow naturally in the wild, as well as tips on how to grow them.

---------- Post added at 09:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:09 PM ----------

As a quick start guide before reading the sticky...

The next time you buy a Phalaenopsis choose an orchid with the kind of flower you like that has the strongest root system you can find. Looking for a plant with strong roots should be first on the list, not second or third. For example, if the store you are purchasing the orchids from has 10 individuals of a Phal with purple spotted flowers, of those 10, you are going to want to choose the one with the most amount of roots you can find. In this case, you are looking for roots that are either shiny white with green or dark brown tips, or roots that are green. Roots that are beige are no good.

Making a habit of choosing an orchid based on their root system is not "sexy". It doesn't excite anyone, and it is not a habit that beginners usually pick up on quickly. But this is what seasoned hobbyists usually look for if they have a chance to purchase their epiphytic orchids in person. And even then, sometimes experienced hobbyists have a lapse of judgement and choose an orchid based on how many flowers there are on the plant or how beautiful the blooms are on the plant first.

The other quick tip is that the second step to choosing a healthy orchid is to find one with strong stems/pseudobulbs/canes. Remember, this is the second step, not the first or the third step!

The third step to choosing an orchid is finding one with good leaves.

The third quick tip is to always repot the orchid immediately after taking the orchid home upon purchase. I usually do not recommend waiting for the flowers to fade.

If you repot the orchid as soon as possible after purchase, you might lose the blooms, but there is a higher chance of bypassing problems with disease before it gets out of control. A living plant will produce another set of blooms the next blooming cycle. To enjoy the blooms now at the risk of the plant running into problems later because it wasn't repotted, will usually end in a lot of disappointment or a dead plant. Dead plants don't bloom anymore after they're gone.

[Egrigby]

Hi Philip,

Thank you. I did not purchase this phalaenopsis. It was a gift several years ago. It sat in my kitchen alternating between over and under watered as I treated it like any other houseplant.

Eventually, combine with degraded media, this must have made it susceptible to the fungal infection. In trying to save this one plant that was a gift, I have learned a lot about what not to do, but I did lose this one.

I do have several other thriving NoId phalaenopsis, a Beallara Marfitch Howard's Dream, and an Oncidium Sherry Baby. I have purchased a true fungicide, hopefully that will improve my results. My hope is that with improved cultural knowledge it will become less necessary.

I appreciate all the advice, there are a lot of people out there recommending peroxide, I thought I was doing the right thing.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Peroxide is maybe ok, for small doses done very very infrequently. If done regularly, that has the potential to open up a whole can of worms.

Disease organisms are usually, (not always), a secondary cause to an orchid's ailments.

The primary reason why a plant will become sick is usually, (again, not always), because of cultural issues. In most cases, the plant's immune system was compromised so badly because it was severely stressed out from being grown in a far less than ideal situation, that the disease organism was able to overwhelm the plant.

A disease organism being the primary cause of an illness in a plant is actually not very common.

The exception to what I said above is usually a viral infection.

[estación seca]

I'm not convinced it had any disease. A lot of Phals develop purple/reddish stems with time. I don't know what happened to your plant, but sometimes when the roots rot, the plant dies even with the best care.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Btw, Phalaenopsis are incredibly resilient. As long as there are roots on the plant, even after the leaves have all fallen off, the plant is still alive and can grow back new leaves over time. Being that Phals grow slow, it can be a very long waiting game.

Even if the plant has a small amount of roots like the ones I see in your pic, it can easily bounce back over time.

It is actually quite difficult to advise anything beyond what I have told you in this thread because I don't really know how you were growing the Phal you were having problems with other than having to mention that the plant was sometimes neglected for some period of time before it was cared for again. No growing/environmental parameters were disclosed for people to understand what kind of environment the plant was grown in other than it was put in a kitchen. There are also no other pics of the Phal in question when it was losing roots, so it is difficult to pinpoint why it was losing roots like yours did. It is also not immediately clear how many times the orchid was treated with peroxide and how it was applied.