Help Save my Phalaenopsis - Is it Rot/Fungus?
 

Greetings,

After repotting my 4 year old+ phalaenopsis and cutting off rotting roots, I noticed a couple leaves turning yellow. I had originally thought it may be old leaves falling off at the bottom but not another leaf closer to the top is yellowing.

I noticed some dried spots that may be rot or some disease? I have sprayed the spots with hydrogen peroxide 3% so far.

Hopefully I caught this problem early enough to save my plant!

Any help will be appreciated!

J

I don't see anything that resembles crown rot. Crown rot occurs at the top of the plant where the new leaves emerge. You don't show that part of the plant in the picture. If you are worried about disease, treat the plant with Physan, but I don't think you have crown rot, or at least you can't see it in the pictures. Your plants actually look pretty good.

More photos of the roots. I think I should be trimming a few more but unsure if there’s rotting or disease with the splotches.

I did take a look at the diseases sticky and I am not sure which of the problems it may be as I see symptoms of multiple different problems.

And here’s the top and closer views.

My main concern was those drying grey splotches on the stem which is on the upper yellowing leaf. The edges of the leaves are turning yellow.

Your plant looks fine. Phals in houses seldom carry more than 4-6 leaves unless temperatures, humidity and watering are excellent. They drop older leaves as new ones form. The older leaves turn yellow as they die, then fall off.

Crown rot is usually caused by suffocating the roots, which require air; or very high humidity, higher than in almost any home, combined with poor air flow.

You probably removed or damaged a lot of healthy but old roots, and then the plant couldn't support all its leaves. Dead Phal roots are dark brown or black, and slimy. Anything light brown, wiry, or papery when dry, is probably alive. I don't remove roots unless I'm certain they are dead. I usually can't tell, so I almost always leave all the roots.

When you ask questions it helps to tell us what your growing conditions are: temperatures and humidity day/night, light, where it is (windowsill, terrarium, greenhouse, light room) how you water and fertilize.

Yeah, you don't have crown rot, or even a sick plant. Maybe a little neglected, but it will be fine. Repot it in a good bark based mix and get those roots that are inside the pot covered. Any aerial roots, you can just leave out in the air. Your roots don't look bad. You just have a good plant that's maybe lived a hard life. If you treat it right, it will recover beautifully and reward you with years of blooms.

---------- Post added at 04:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:06 PM ----------

Don't use the orchid bark from Lowe's. Orchiata is a great brand of bark. You can get it online from a number of places, including Amazon. Repotme.com has a great selection of mixes, and they are great quality, but they're pretty spendy, but if you only have one plant, or just a few plants, the cost may be worth it.

---------- Post added at 04:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:09 PM ----------

If you can, when you repot the plant, pot it a little deeper so that the lowest green leaf is as close to level with the potting mix as you can get it (but not under the potting media). If there's some dead stem at the bottom of the plant that has no live roots on it, you can trim that off to make it easier to pot the plant lower in the pot.

---------- Post added at 04:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:12 PM ----------

When you're ready to repot, unpot the plant, clean off all the old medium, and take some pictures of the entire cleaned, unpotted plant, and we may be able to give you further tips on how best to pot the plant.

Thank you all for the feedback and advice.

I was getting worried because the edges of the upper leaf with the splotches are starting to yellow out so I though there was rotting going along the stem.

I keep the plant in a repotme slotted pot facing a West/Northern window and just moved it to a repotme mixture for Phals a couple of weeks ago. I guess I did cut a few good roots because I didn’t change the potting material for almost 3 or 4 years until now.

I water it once a week using tap water in New York City. It has been very hot and humid as of late here.

The roots in the last photo are bone dry, and the leaves I see are not shiny and full of water. I try not to let my phals get that dry. If they dry out that much between every watering, they might only carry 3-5 leaves.

People worry about overwatering. The problem isn't too much water, it's too little air at the roots.

ES beat me to it, but the next thing I was going to say is that Phal roots should never be that dry. Ge those covered up with a good, quality bark based mix and that will help keep them moist. Remember, they don't want to be soggy, but they never want to be completely dry either.

---------- Post added at 01:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:38 PM ----------

I have a lot of Phals that I water every day when it's hot. And too little water could explain the yellowing of the leaves.

---------- Post added at 01:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:40 PM ----------

I told this story just a couple days ago, but it seems worth telling again here. In the late 80s or early 90s before home internet was a thing, I used to get my information from books. They all talked about the dangers of overwatering. They stressed it so much, it never occurred to me that you could underwater an orchid.

Then one year my family went to visit my aunt and uncle in Des Moines, Iowa. There, I visit my first real orchid nursery, Iowa Orchids Inc. The owner was there, and I talked to him for a long time and told him how my plants were slow to grow, the bulbs were shriveled, and the new growths were stunted, and of course no flowers. I assured him that I was not over watering.

He asked how much I was watering, and I told him like once a month in the summer when they're outside, and maybe every six weeks in the winter when they are inside. He was absolutely taken aback. He explained to me that "dry" doesn't mean bone dry like a cactus. It just means no droplets of water filling in the air spaces in the medium. Plants need to get dry-ish between waterings, but never bone dry. He said I was not watering nearly enough. I bought a few plants from him, and he threw one in for free. He was a great guy. I don't know if that nursery is still around. This was a long time ago and he was pretty odl then, but he was super nice and helpful, and was thrilled to help a young orchid enthusiast find his way.

I took his advice and started watering more. The pseudobulbs plumped back up, the growths started growing faster, and they even got big enough to bloom. He was totally right. I simply was not watering enough because I was so afraid of watering too much. So take what you will from that. Overwatering can certainly kill an orchid, but underwatering is also certainly possibly. You don't want to do either. Find a happy place in the middle between wet and bone dry, and keep your plants there.

I hate to stick my toe in this water but... In the first two pictures, on the third leaf from the bottom, there is a dry looking area where the leaf clasps the body of the plant. That is the area the OP is worried about.

I agree, the plant is dry. If it were my plant, I would watch that area. Don't get that area wet. It may be mechanical damage. If so, the leaf will fall and the plant will go on. I would water more, and worry less. I have lost leaves higher up on the plant, not often, but it has happened.

Now I see the dry area Dollythehun mentioned. I agree it's nothing to worry about. I've seen that on lots of Phals. It too could have been caused by underwatering.

JJC - was it a standard repot?

Or was it some kind of emergency repot? Just asking because you mentioned 'cutting off rotting roots'.

As you had been growing the orchid for 4 years, then we can assume that the orchid was growing satisfactorily.

Totally agree that media and roots being too wet can lead to oxygen issues for the roots (and causing issues with water intake for the plant) --- and being too dry will impede water intake for the plant too.

If the roots were rotting as you mentioned, then it is possible that the orchid was taking a downward turn in health - so leaves starting to become yellow could be related to that.

Aside from watering considerations ----- there are other things to look into maybe. If you use fertiliser and/or mag-cal ........ then look into possibilities of salts having accumulated in the media to some level that can impact the roots negatively.

Also - disinfectants applied to roots - especially in high enough concentrations can set back the roots ...... or even maybe kill roots. You probably didn't apply disinfectant to roots ----- so just mentioning it only, just in case.

You definitely have experience with the growing of your phal, as it is 4 years old! In case it can help, I can just paste some links that could be helpful anytime, and a bit of a read.

Click Here and Click Here and Click Here and Click Here and Click Here

Thanks all for the replies.

I saw some lighter colored papery roots at the bottom when I decided to repot. Some of the roots looked a bit brown. Another issue with repotting was that the roots were extremely crammed into the original pot and I wanted to go up in size.

My main worry now is the multiple yellowing leaves. I will try to water a bit more and see if that helps. I had mostly left it alone with mostly once a week watering but this is the first time I am noticing multiple yellowing leaves like this so it had me more concerned.

I had another Phal having crown rot and figured I would try to repot both at once.

The other one seems mostly gone but am trying to see if anything is still alive in the core. So far I see one small shoot coming out so not sure how that will turn out.

Here is a photo of increases yellowing throughout the plant.

This has not occurred before when I had watered about once a week. Although when I did reply, I had issues trying to fit all the roots below the bark for the fear of snapping them.

You're still keeping it too dry. It's dropping older leaves to divert the water to the new leaves. Those yellow leaves are going to dry up, but the plant is still alive.

The other one may have died from underwatering, not crown rot. Crown rot is usually caused by suffocating roots combined with somewhat low temperatures.

Phals want constant warmth, constantly moist roots and constant air at the roots. In large bark, which you are using, there are large air spaces around the roots. Keep the roots always moist if there is plenty of air. You could water daily.

What are your ambient temperatures? We should have asked about this earlier.

When at home, the AC is keeping the room generally in the 70s but not too sure when I am out. It has been in the upper 80s and lower 90s over the last week.

90s F is fine for Phals, but they need plenty of water.

If any of the roots are still alive, then watering a bit more will definitely help.

It definitely looks like the roots have just dried up. I think that if you use wetted bark (eg. soaked in water for long enough before potting) ...... then water can get into the bark. Otherwise, dry bark doesn't allow much or any water to get into it.

And once the bark is 'primed' with water in it, an orchid potted into it should do ok ---- but just got to make sure the bark is still airy enough - big enough pieces - to avoid creating very wet root-drowning conditions down in the unseen depths of the pot.

Gentle air movement in the growing area ----- having some gentle air flow is beneficial.

Some bad news...

I took out the plant from the pot and it looks like many of the roots died out since my last repot.

Looks like I damaged them when I was trying to get it out of the last pot. The roots were so compacted that I had to cut the old pot to extract the roots.

I sanitized my scissors with hydrogen peroxide and did a wipe with an alcohol prep pad and trimmed out the rest of the dying roots.

Not too much is left but I’m hoping my phal can take it. I repotted it so most of the roots are covered by media now instead of half floating outside.

Hopefully this can keep it hydrated in between watering sessions.

Let me know what else I can do.

The damage is in the photos below.

New roots will grow, encouraged by a much friendlier medium (the ones that were growing outside the pot were seeing air, since there wasn't much in the pot) Don't worry about that lower leaf.. it'll drop in the course of time. The crown (which is where the growth happens) looks fine.

Bad news can be turned into useful news ----- for the future, that helps us all.

It is possible that the roots were damaged during the repot. But - even though not absolutely sure - it's also possible that those particular roots could have drowned - being in too watery conditions in the media. Hard to say.

The nice thing is you unpotted to get an idea of the situation with the roots. That was good.

If an orchid has heaps of roots that had grown in the pot, and then the plant gets transferred to new media, then it's important to have a rough idea about the state of the media and the roots when watering the new pot and media combination.

If a pot is filled with lots of media - and if that media combined with lots of water is able to create very watery or sludgy or soggy/soppy conditions for relatively long periods of time - and taking too long to become 'lightly moist' or 'lightly damp' again ----- then regular roots of orchids can take a nasty dive in health. Probably due to oxygenated water not being able to move around quick enough down there in those dark depths.

One test or check can be to have a similar pot with similar media --- with no orchid. And if you water in the same way - same schedule, same rate, same amount ----- same as if you were watering a potted orchid -- then after a week or so --- check the media by digging down into it .... to the middle and bottom of the pot.

If the media is really soppy and wet ----- then that can be an issue. It depends on whether the roots are adapted to that sort of condition or not.

Sometimes, a combination of cold and wet for long times is a problem too.

Is it normal to even be seeing the smaller new leaf at the bottom and top leaves to be yellow?

I have increased watering but see no improvement.

Alas, this does not look good. Especially the yellowing of the top leaves. The crown may have already died. If that is the case, if the roots are good there is the possibility of a new basal growth, so don't dump it.