Sunburnt leaves, remove or ignore

[ArronOB]

Usually when I know that a day over 40°C is coming I put a second layer of shade cloth over the roof of my shade house. Fortunately we don't get many days like that.

Last week we had a hot day and for some reason I completely forgot. Now I have three or four cattleyas with sunburnt leaves. This sunburnt parts have gone a nasty black and cover about 30% of the leaf.

Now I'm wondering if I should remove the leaf or not. Removing the leaf could eliminate a possible source of infection. On the other hand I haven't removed sunburnt leaves in the past and it's never been a problem. What do others do?

Cheers
Arron

[SouthPark]

With sunburned leaves ----- if the burned region dries and hardens right up, then it's absolutely ok to keep the leaf.

I've had burned leaves on catts before - due to those same hot intense days conditions. Similar percentage of burning on particular leaves as you described. The leaves just dried and hardened - no issue. I just allowed the leaves to stay as-is.

The blackened appearance of burned orchid leaves certainly does look concerning at first - but we can totally relax once the region dries up and feels very hard to the touch.

Just monitor the situation and maintain good air-flow around the whole plant. It should pan out just fine.

We only need to intervene (like remove leaf portions or apply some Yates Anti-Rot etc) if the affected regions appear to spread significantly when we don't expect it to.

On the other hand - for aesthetic purposes - if the orchid has plenty of leaves already, then there's always the option of snipping off burned regions - just to achieve a mainly green appearance. Otherwise - just leave the orchid as-is. The battle scars gives some individuality, and surviving scorched leaves can still carry out their function.

For my orchids - I keep scorched surviving leaves. I usually don't get scorched leaves though. But it can happen sometimes.