Pale, Marked leaves on paph

[wahaj]

Hiya,

I'm at work right now so can't post a picture but will try to do it tonight.

Basically I have 3 paphs, a couple of them Leeanums, and another similar hybrid. When I bought them, they had mid green, floppy leaves. Last year they were in good light and watering was erratic, however they developed some mid-dark ish green leaves . I've now moved to a new flat and the existing leaves seem to be loosing colour. I'd slowly moved them into an area of light, but there's no direct sun, and because of the amount of plants around them, they're always shaded.

It's difficult to describe how they look. It's like they're almost losing water as they feel rough in texture, and they seem to have a network of dark green veins all over the pale coloured leaves.

There is new growth on all them and it seems healthy and vigorous to me. It is however lighter in colour to last year's growth.

I'm assuming this is an issue with light.

The humidity around them seems to be constantly between about 80-90%, sometimes higher.

I've only started to feed them this year with a very very weak solution seaweed fertiliser.

I always water them with rain water.

Unfortunately one of aparatus I'm looking to buy next is a min/max thermometer, so I can't really comment accurately on the temp ranges they're growing in, however it's always roughly room temperature and I don't have the radiator on at any time, it's just a naturally warm flat.

Help!

[Gin]

Hi , It could be lack of nutrients in the seaweed combined with the rain water , lack of minerals . I use rain water but also use MSU. Fert for rain from First Rays Orchids . OOPS just noticed you are not in the US. using a more complete Fert . might help one that has trace minerals .. Gin

[wahaj]

thanks gin. Check these out, perhaps they'll clarify the situation.

Here are the pictures. I understand everything looks a bit wet but it's because I've just watered haha.

This is what the leaf looks like now.


This is what the old one looks like one of the others. I've noticed this "bleaching" of the leaves is only happening on one plant to this extent. And then I realised that this is the plant that I had a bit of an accident with a month or so ago. When I was repotting, the roots weren't of good health on any of my paphs as back then I didn't know much about their culture. However while repotting one of the growths broke, and it may have been the new growth that broke, which you can see in the 3rd pic.


so I just put some rooting gel on the broken growth and put it back into the medium, and it hasn't shown signs on dieing, so I'm assuming it's still alive and hopefully started to make roots. Could this be what's causing problems?

The medium has been changed on all 3 of them, but only this one is reacting like this, the others are happily growing away and having plenty of new growth.


Now I'm starting to think this is less to do with any virus, but more to do with my growing conditions. This mottled leaf one here. This is one of the old leaves on one side. Not looking good! that black marks made me think it's too much sun so have moved it into a shadier position.


When it arrived the yellow leaf was starting to become yellow anyway. However it's not improved in health under my care, only gotten worse. Should I remove this leaf?


Again new growth on this plant seems to be fine as well.


These 2 are of my zygopetalum. This one seems to have black streaks on it...but again the new growth seems very clean and lush.



This now seems to be the average humidity around my plants....even when I come home in the evening.


Hope this helps you guys to help me!

thanks.

[Gin]

Hi again , The bottom leaves will die off in time on the Paphs . looks like that is what is happening in the photo . Actually the plants look good, the old leaves will look beat up before starting the dieing off process . The one is probably because of the breakage .
the Zygo looks like mine the leaf will probably also die off .
Most plants grow new and get rid of the oldest . Not a virus so don't worry .Only worry if leaves that are new or coming from the crown start to die off . Gin

[wahaj]

thanks gin, you've really put my mind at ease. And yea the yellow leaf came off just now very easily.