Leptotes unicolour... leaves dropping off when they look healthy

[RosieC]

I have a similar problem to Zootrophion on this thread, but mine is a Leptotes unicolor.

Basically I just keep noticing healthy seeming leaves have falling off. It only has eight left now (it's lost eight) and I'm getting worried.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[gnathaniel]

Hi Rosie, that's a real bummer! Can you give us some idea of the conditions you're growing the plant in? I'd suspect some kind of non-disease stress but hard to say without knowing the plant's situation... Hang in there, little Leptotes!

--Nat

[RobS]

As with the other topic. Most likely to cold / to much moisture and check the affected rhizome for disease activity.

Good luck I don't think there is to much you can do at this stage.

[Gin]

I think Rob nailed it ..I have an old bicolor it is mounted not watered a lot during cool weather in the warmer weather almost daily in the am . It is hanging next to my Tolumnia ..

[camille1585]

My first guess is also that's it's cold. I know that you've mentioned before that it's quite cool where you grow your orchids. Do you know what the min and max temperatures are that it's getting?

[RosieC]

Thanks everyone.

Sorry should have said more about conditions. It's mounted, a little bit back from a west window (behind some other mounts). I water every day or every other day.

Temps range from 15C to 21C. I've not measured close to the plant, but that's what I get on a min/max thermometer in a nearby room and 15C is also the absolute min the stat should let it drop to even when the system is 'off' and 21C is about what we nudge the stat to when we are feeling cold.

I was starting to wonder about cold. I've tried reducing watering (not watering every day as I had been) and it has not seemed to make a difference.

... now of course as Camille has already heard, our heating has failed this morning so the chances of me improving it's temps may not be possible just yet, in fact the house is going to be colder till at least Friday when the engineer is due to come out. I will try moving it to the living room though as that's the only room we can heat just now

[RobS]

The heater is it a burning type heater? It might be possible that some of the "smoke" came to the plant and gave it Ethylene poisoning but then you'd have a headache to due to CO poisoning.

[RosieC]

Rob, now generally we have a central boiler with radiators arround the house. All exhaust gas goes out the roof. We also have some CO detectors arround the house to make sure nothing's escaping and poisoning us.

The leaf drop was before the heating failure. Now we only have a gas fire in the living room, but even that is properly built into the wall and vented outside. Again there is a CO detector in the living room to ensure it doesn't poison us (or the orchids in the living room).

[RosieC]

I'm going to work on the assumption it could be a combination of cold and wet. I will also check it closely for any signs of fungas.