Paph Loosing Leaves

[camille1585]

I agree with ES's remark about the fertilizer. For Paphs and many orchids it's good to aim for roughly 75-100ppm Nitrogen per week. The dosage you are giving now is only 20ppm per watering, so you'd have to water 4-5 times a week with fertilizer to be in that ballpark!

I looked up that fertilizer, and see that the recommended dosage is 1/2 tsp per gallon. Is there a specific reason that you reduced it?

[Ray]

The loss of lower leaves by what appears to be an otherwise healthy plant is a good indicator of insufficient nutrition; the plant is moving previously-absorbed nutrients from existing tissue into newly-growing tissue.

If properly grown, old growths can hang around for years after blooming, adding to the resource accumulation and storage for the colony.

[Alan Sailer]

I'll increase the fertilizer as per the previous posts. It does look like I was under-fertilizing. The very dilute fertilizer works so well on my phals that I used it with the paph.

It actually seems amazing that the plant was doing so well.
As far as the bloom spike, I watched three new leaves grow up over several months. I then noticed something coming out that did not look like a leaf and it turned out to be a bud.

So there was no bud when I bought the plant.

Thanks for all the help.

[estación seca]

The buds of many monocarpic plants form a year or more before they can be seen. This includes Agave, Paphiopedilum, and biennial Allium (onion, garlic.) They remain microscopically tiny deep inside the rosette, with tiny leaves surrounding them that have not expanded yet.

When you plant a clove of garlic, or a small set onion, the flower may already have initiated.

Each fan of a Paph will grow for a while, then the terminal meristem forms an invisible bud deep inside the fan. That growth will not grow more new leaves, but already-formed tiny leaves near the meristem will continue to expand. The fan may produce more growths from the base, from meristems that didn't develop.

I suggested the bud on your Paph may have formed before you bought it, but remained microscopically small at the center of the rosette. The plant was coasting on the nutrients stored in the plant while at the nursery. As it expanded the bud, it ran out of stored nutrients. As Ray said, it is likely cannibalizing old leaves to sustain the flower.

[Alan Sailer]

estación seca,

Wow. Thanks for the detail.

Cheers.