Yellowing leaves

[tasha]

Yellow! Or hello

Yellowing leaves are a part of the semi hydro right? I have one leaf on my Phal that is dying, but the rest of the plant looks ok. Is the yellowing due to overwatering or just old age?

thank you all!

[rbarata]

Please post photos.

[tasha]

Apologies! Here is the leaf. It already fell off today

[rbarata]

Apologies!

You don't need to appologize. We always ask for photos because an image speaks a thousand words.

Your plant...that's an old leaf. In plants, and in general, the bottom leaves are the oldest, so the first ones to die.

[Mountaineer370]

The older, bottom leaves yellowing, drying, and falling off is common and natural to all types of orchid culture, not just semi-hydro. The rest of the leaves as well as the aerial roots all look very healthy, and I think your plant is just fine.

[SouthPark]

Yes, looks to be all under control. Oldest leaf yellowing while the rest of the plant (leaves and roots) remains and stays green and healthy is good.

And yellowing of multiple leaves on orchids (that don't have dormancy behaviour) - especially leaves that are meant to still be growing larger - is an issue. Yellowing of any leaf that is still meant to be growing and getting larger on an orchid is probably an issue too.

[Ray]

No, yellowing leaves is certainly NOT part of semi-hydro culture, and a plant in S/H cannot be overwatered.

As you haven't provided much info, let me make a guess at the scenario:

The plant had a decent root system and was moved into S/H. Immediately and expectedly, those roots started to fail, as they had not grown in that environment. New roots, optimized for S/H, were growing, but were not extensive enough to fully support the plant yet, so it started consuming its stored reserves, leading to the loss of the oldest leaf.

It is unfortunate, not uncommon at any repot (S/H or otherwise), and really nothing to worry about if it is otherwise growing well.

[rbarata]

It has a new root, I think.

[tasha]

Thank you kind people. My orchid has 5-6 new roots already. I think it’s doing ok.