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leathery wrinkled cattelya leaves

12 years ago

We have been keeping orchids for 10 yrs; with success until about 2 yrs. ago. At this time all of the plants went into decline. We have researched & done all suggested care from re-potting, insect treating & feeding & have only seen further decline in plant health.

3 yrs. ago our community experienced a disasterous salmonella contamination in our public water supply & now our water is heavily chlorine-treated.

We already had been using reverse osmosis technology for our orchids from the beginning but question if chlorine still could be the problem?

We are in a rural area & other orchid growers we know of in close proximity are on their own well-water supply.

Leaves are faded, leathery & wrinkled & blossom production has stopped completely. Is there any way we can save our plants?

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Comments (3)

arthurm
12 years ago
This is a difficult question to answer. I do have a rainwater tank to water my orchids but to make up for the lack of chemicals in that water I use an orchid fertilizer with a range of trace elements.

As for the Chlorine, who knows! but for years i used the water provided by Sydney Water and my large Cattleya collection grew and bloomed.

I think the Chlorine, pure water thing is a bit of a myth though there are some species that are fussy about water quality.

Not solving your problem but i suspect Chlorine is not the cause though if you think it is you could store your water from the tap for a day or two to let all the Chlorine evaporate before use.
orchidnick
12 years ago
Your RO system has a prefilter that removes Chlorine and Chloramine. If that fails these 2 chemicals destroy the membrane of the RO unit. If you are getting RO water, the chlorine has been removed.

Have you tested for virus and what are the roots like?

Nick
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The pictures are actually deceiving. In personal, the color of its leaves, is really uneven green with yellowish tint mixed up everywhere. I won't be worried if it just from the bottom leaves but in here, the last 8 leaves are affected. I don't think it's normal. The third pic was rot infection that I managed to stop from spreading. I forgot to mention that it has a keiki and 3 leaves from it were lost from brown rot. Then I just cutted the leaf from 4th picture as it spread futher this morning. I think you're right regarding the roots. Roots are still many but this vanda already lost half of its total roots and still counting. The one I worried the most is that the 4 upmost leaves are oddly leathery and squishy whereas it was stiff and firm before. I really don't know how it happened. Maybe it's dehydrated, but I give it a lot of water everyday. The sunlight it receives is partial and not enough to burn it. Is there something else?
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orchid126
12 years ago
Has anything else changed? Have you gotten a new heating system, or perhaps the old system isn't working quite as well as before? Have you switched to a different fuel? What other changes have taken place that might affect the orchids' climate? A friend was suffering a decline in her orchids for a couple of years until she discovered her propane tank was leaking.

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