Miniature orchid leaf loss
 

Hi guys,

does anyone have experience with miniature orchids, specifically Diplocaulobium Abbreviatum? I believe it's also called dendrobium abbreviatum if that helps.

I had this orchid for over a year now and it has been doing really well in this paludarium I built. The roots are going crazy growing every which way, it trippled in size at least, always growing new pseudobulbs that are big and plump and healthy looking (no flowers as of yet tho).

However, these past couple months it slowly started losing some leaves; they yellow from the tip and fall off in a couple days, some have darker, dried up looking spots. It was gradual enough at first and started with the oldest growths that I didn't pay it much attention, but now there are a lot of leafless bulbs and the newer ones are starting to yellow and fall...

Attachment 158395 Attachment 158396 Attachment 158397

As you can see the damage doesn't spread any further, the bulbs themselves are fine.

Conditions have been stable, temperature is around 20-25°C, humidity somewhere in the 75-85% range, I spay with rain water daily. There are no pests that I have seen apart from the occasional mini snail in the moss wall but never around this particular orchid and those tend to go for the root tips in my experience anyway, but no sign of that here.

Can anyone help? :shock:

I'm not familiar with this species. I don't know what is the problem. But that's what Dens I'm familiar with do when they get too much light.

I looked this up on IOSPE - it's shown as a full shade plant. How much light is it getting? Are you using electric lighting? How long is the light on?

Hmm, you might be onto something. I'm using the Skylight tiny RH1 (Tiny - Skylight), it's on for 12 hours... the plant is pretty close to it as well (I def made some rookie mistakes when building the paludarium :duh:). I guess I didn't consider it as the potential issue because it's been installed since July last year and the issue is relatively recent. Also because I read if the light level is good the pseudobulbs will grow bigger, rounder and plumper which certainly has been my experience :D

Still, you might be right, thanks so much for calling my attention to it! And now I think about it during Winter the light was on for 11 hours only. I will change it back and pull the light further back, there's a giant bromelia that can provide some shade and disperse the light.

:thanx:

I do not grow this orchid and hopefully, someone who does will be able to give you the advice you need. In the meantime, based on my experience growing orchids and other plants under lights I would see whether the temperature of the room might have increased. I have grown miniatures and other plants under lights and I noticed a similar effect when the temperature of the room increased and I did not have enough airflow. Just something to consider until someone who grows this can give you better advice.

I don't have that particular one, but I do grow Diplocaulobium aratriferum and stelliferum. They seem to drop older leaves but make new growth and seem quite healthy. So that might just be force of nature.

When it DOES bloom, the photo I found of the species seems spectacular. But if it is anything like others of the genus, flowers last only a day or less - so don't postpone getting photos!

Thanks for the tip :) I haven't noticed any temp changes, with the heating on during Winter time it's pretty constant (around 24°C during the day and 20°C at night). Last summer was def unbearably hot and I know I caused some stress for this orchid when I removed it from the cork board and tried to find the best place for it, moving it around, damaging beautiful healthy roots in the process (it still hurts my heart), but it has since recovered nicely from all that.

---------- Post added at 08:49 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:47 AM ----------

Yes it is always the older leaves dropping, so maybe... and there are new growths all the time and otherwise everything looks healthy and good, so hopefully I'm worried about nothing :lol:

Oh, those are pretty! :) Shame they don't last long, but yeah that's also my experience with most minitures.