DeflaskBLC: brown rot and curled leaves?
I purchased a flask of hybrid LCatt. from the North Carolina Orchid show two weeks ago. They were well labeled as well as well sealed within a Eherlenmeyer flask in what appeared to be agar that was black and in a solid gel. The person selling said the plants were around 25 plants unopened/still sterile and of proper size for deflasking. She was the daughter of a known orchid grower who recently left a company and has started his own operation. In fact one of the orchids I own is named after the same individual. (Greg Uzar). So, with that sales pitch I felt relatively safe making this purchase for what appeared to be the amount online flasks are sold at ($55US).
<Fast forward past the next paragraph to get to the bad part>
After leaving the show and seeing in a better lit area one plant was visibly showing a darker pattern on its leaves but then again the Agar is black and there is condensation on the flask so I wasn't sure if it was merely reflection. (As an aside question, I assume that black color is from depletion of sugars as the agar seems clear then turns darker in all articles I have seen?) So, Yesterday I de-flasked, and I used pea sized pre-soaked Hydroton/Leca/Clay pellets for 5 of the seedlings, and used soaked rockwool cubes in 2" net cups for 4 seedlings, and I placed the two shadowed leaved/mosaic plantlets in isolation (separate terrarium glass bottles). There were 11 total all planted as individual plantlets made up of two growths (pseudobulbs) with one or more leaves on each growth. As I inspected each plant, I wisked in water and manually removed any Agar, and any dead leaves (with sanitized scissors), sprayed all plants with Hydrogen peroxide 3 percent solution and transferred the bulk to a clear plastic shoebox (spinach container it has a lid for humidity but i have left it open for now to make sure the rockwool dries some as it seems very wet.
<The problem is revealed>
I'm concerned that many leaves had small brown specks/spots, a couple plants have leaves that are misshapen, and there were a couple larger plantlets with the leaves showing a shadow (in perhaps a mosaic pattern?) This is new for me, so before I wrongly accuse this grower (and I believe this person is a reputable orchid grower as the NC orchid show would probably weed out those that were known to pass off diseased plants).
1.) Is it even possible that a properly sanitized and sealed flask could have had a bacteria or fungus allowing black spot without any other signs of moldy growths on the agar?
2.) Is it even possible the entire flask is somehow from a mosaic-virus infected parent plant and that the larger leaved seedlings are the first to express the virus in a visible way?
3.) Is it even possible that they opened a flask and removed these 11 plantlets from a larger flask and repackaged them to sell as "a flask" to an un-knowledgable buyer?
( I am thinking about this last bit because every other online de-flasking video seems to be 50-60 seedlings that are much smaller in size than these and from what I understand orchid seeds are actually too small to separate out 11 per flask.) I was led to believe these are seedlings and not meri-cloned because they are supposedly newly hybridized orchid cultivars by Greg Uzar without a AOS name but rather the two parent plants listed on the flask...I will attempt to attach photos.
Last edited by Orchidenvy; 04-23-2019 at 05:49 PM..
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