Virus on my Phaius leaves? Please..Noooooo!

[nynighthawk]

Hi folks,

Thank you all for your good and thoughtful suggestions.

Although several folks suggested that the spots might be due to water droplets, I really don't think that was the problem. I only have a few orchids and I'm careful to avoid droplets on the leaves after I water them. These 'chids have been indoors, so sunlight being magnified by waterdroplets wouldn't have been the problem, either.

The problem became noticeable during a really hot spell we'd had. Due to the fact that my cat broke the window screen in the room where I keep my orchids, I've had to leave the window closed until I get it fixed. That meant the room was both hot and humid during our heat wave.

I think that the combination of heat stress and old potting medium (sphagnum moss)..OK, I'm a bad orchid mom and I starve my children...led to a nutritional deficiency of some kind. I bumped up my fertilization schedule for the Phaiuses and the new leaves have been coming in beautifully clear of any spotting! The weather has been a little cooler, too, so I think the plants are less stressed overall.

I knew that Phaiuses are supposed to be heavy feeders, but I didn't think the change in fertilization levels would have such a dramatic, rapid effect.

Lesson learned!

I hope that this is helpful to anyone out there with a similar, mysterious spotting problem.

Thanks, again, for all your good suggestions. It helped me think through what I might be doing wrong.

Jess

[santiago]

thanks for this thread, i just goggled "phaius cymv" (because mine has exactly the same spots) and found this. i was really scared it could be a virus

[nynighthawk]

HI Santiago,

I'm glad this was helpful.

Whereas I was fertilizing my Phaiuses with double the strength of a balanced orchid fertilizer that I was using on my other orchids every other week, I started feeding them weekly with the stronger mix. The new leaves on the plants continue to come in clear of any spotting.

Please keep us posted on how your plants are doing. I hope your problem isn't the phaius cymv and it's just a fixable nutritional deficiency.

All best wishes,

Jess

[NYCorchidman]

Not trying to be a party pooper or anything negative, but I find it funny and almost annoying how most people say the most postive things possible when someone post some potentially/possibly diseased plants.
I guess they mean to be nice, but this place is supposed to be helpful in informative way not emotional way.
Posters want to know what's happening to their plants, they want facts! at least I do!

My first gut feeling was virus as I've seen this similar pattern as an example (not phaius though).

I'm very happy to hear the new leaves are all spotless green. I do think the spotting had something to do with the heat as it occured during the heat spell and the newer leaves are spotless.

Again, this is just my opinion, not trying to make anyone feel sad or bad about their plants.
Many virused plants grow fine without showing any symptoms until it is stressed by some environmental cues.
If it is virus, given that your collection is small enough and the plant continues to grow and flower well, you can still keep it but away from other plants.

Water droplet/sunburn damage doesn't look like this, instead it is just small little black dots.
Some insects can do this kind of damage, but spot pattern on your plant looks too uniform to be insect caused.
certain mineral deficiency cause plant leaves yellow as whole, or leave the veins green and the rest yellow for example. different plants can show deficiency in different manners, and I'm no expert on plant physiology of phaius.

It could also be phaius way of showing heat stress, if this is the case, it's very interesting because usually heat stressed leaves turn yellowish overall, not spotting yellow, other than patches of sunburn of varying color, dark brown or black being the worst case.

[nynighthawk]

Thanks for your thoughts, OrchidMan.

I agree with you. I think it's helpful to start addressing problems with the simplest solutions, first ("when you hear hoofbeats...think horses, not zebras"). But, sometimes you do have a zebra!

Knock wood, the phaiuses continue to be producing nice, clear green leaves since I bumped up their fertilization schedule and the temperatures haven't been quite so stifling.

Only problem, now is browning of some leaftips that is progressing back down the leaves. Gotta do some investigation of this. I suspect it's some kind of fungal infection....there's a conspicuous yellow band between the healthy green leaf and the progressing browning area.

I trimmed the browning area and dusted with cinnamon. But, the browning starts up again at the cut edge and continues down the leaf. :-(

It's always something........... Sighhhhhhhhhhhh

[NYCorchidman]

Thanks, Jessica,
I love the horse/zebra anology.

Orchids give me much joy but at times (especially my ondiciums) drive me just crazy with leaf problem. and mines are not that bad either. I'm just too sensitive to little issues, but issues are issues, right?

I'm happy to know that the new leaves are spotless. Now, we don't know if it was heat or nutrients. hmmm

Regarding leaftip browing, can you post pictures? then again, I don't grow phaius.
Usually though, fertilizer burn will be dark brown and dry with no fine margin between the dead and live portions.
Is it happening to many leaves? how wide is the yellow band? if the band is rather wide, it's more likely that it's fertilizer burn, but then again, the term wide is relative, so pictures will help.

Maybe go easy on the fertilizer since you mentioned you bumped it up.

I've had two paphiopedilum that had browning leaf tip problem. (was not natural aging)
It started as dark reddish browning with large yellow band. It progressed quite fast. (doubled in size in 10 days, so not crazy fast but fast I thought).
I cut the affected part and good portion into healthy tissue. One paph stopped any more browning. and the other one kept turning browning and went downhill. I tossed it in a trash bin.

When you trimmed the brown tips, did you cut into the healthy tissue as well? Maybe you should try that and see if it makes any difference.
I think it's either bacteria or fertilizer.

Also, when you cut the leaves, make sure you don't use the same tool that you used to cut directly into the brown part and then cut into green portion. In case it is bacterial, what you do is just spreading the germ into the healthy tissue.
So just cut right into the healthy tissue at first cut. That's at least how I did.

After trying this, the cut tip turn brown again, then I would suspect fertilizer burn. Then you would want to repot the plant into a fresh mix.
or dip the roots into a systemic chemical to kill whatever might be doing the damage and repot.

[Bloomin_Aussie]

I'd agree. Leaf tips can brown off like that with overuse of fertilisers. Since you already mentioned you are using a double strength fert mix, that is the most likely suspect.