Phal leaf has pitting, is it some disease?

[sweta]

Hi,

I got an orchid on clearance and didnt notice the pitting on one of the leaves until I got home. The orchid looks healthy, good roots, leaves, 2 spikes with some of the blooms fallen off most likely naturally withered blooms. Could this be due to spider mites? I didnt notice any mites so far on leaves. Could it be some fungal/bacterial/viral disease. I have a small collection of orchids and I'm afraid of transferring any disease or pests to them. Please suggest what would be the best course of action.

[estación seca]

I don't know what caused the pits. It might have been poor conditions at the shop.

The roots look good. I would repot when you have time and materials to do it properly. In the mean time I would water when the roots just turn silvery white.

I would expect new growth to be normal.

[katsucats]

I feel like any leaf blemish gets the same treatment. Check for spider mites. Spray a general purpose fungicide. Hope it works. As for virus, I test all my orchids, but that's expensive. If you don't plan on testing, then you should just hope it isn't a virus and resign to the fact that they will eventually end up in the collection. Sterilizing your tools, washing your hands, making sure orchids don't touch, etc., will limit co-infection.

If the pitting isn't spreading, then that's probably good enough. A lot of things might cause something like that.

[Ray]

The leaf close-ups reminds me a bit of a minor case of mesophyll collapse, which can result from quick temperature changes, such as hitting them with cold water on a hot day.

All in all, I’d say you’re seeing evidence of so-so care in the past, with nothing significant to be concerned about.

[sweta]

Thank you all for your responses. I went through some of the previous threads and looks like there were some cases where people had to get rid of their entire collection because the infection was spreading really fast like wildfire. I also remembered in one of the Fredmeyer stores I had seen the same kind of pitting on a bunch of orchids probably because the infection must have spread through contact or close proximity. I'm not sure if the problem with this orchid was mesophyll cell collapse or some other fungal/bacterial infection. But I had to make the tough call to get rid of it rather than to risk loosing all my other orchids I've learnt an important lesson to avoid buying clearance orchids with any kind of leaf damage.