Green Bumps of Tissue on Catasetum
 

My catasetum has developed these strange green bumps. They are part of the tissue and not a pest. I’m thinking it’s some kind of interaction between misting the leaves and being so tall that they are very near the artificial light. They are not hot or even warm to the touch. No redness. I’m baffled. Any ideas?

There are leaf-miner insects than can cause bumps like that. I suggest you contact your local county agricultural extension and ask them.

Bamanana, whatever you have I have too. My catasetum has the same bumps. I thought it looked like part of the plant too, but I'll be reading up on leaf-miner insects just in case. Mine is growing indoors under led lights -- right under them.

I googled the leaf miner thing and none of the pictures looked at all like ours. Thankfully. I’m actually just curious because the plant is vibrant and healthy, even with its bumps. It sits on a shelf full of cattleyas and no other plant is affected at all. I’m really leaning hard toward the light thing. I’m hoping someone with strong catasetum experience will know exactly what it is. This plant is my first and although I thoroughly researched it, no one said anything about little green bumps. 😉

It's normal. Or at least it's not CymMV or ORSV, and it doesn't cause the leaves to die. My plants from SVO have it. I don't think it looks like leaf miner damage. The only thing I can think of that I might have are spider mites. It might also be inconsistent watering, or something -- I don't know. I don't mist any of my orchids at all.

My Catasetum also has these bumps. It's physiological, and probably edema seeing how much water these plants are given. When a substrate is constantly (or very often), edema is much more likely to happen. Edema is caused by a combination of high root pressure (plant taking up lots of water) and periods of low transpiration rates : think cool gray day, night/day temperature fluctuations... This leads to water pressure building in the leaf cells, and this the water can't be shed fast enough through transpiration, it leaks out of the cells forming the bumps.

100% normal leaf characteristic for certain species and their progeny.