Hi, Calvin. Gad that leaf looks horrible. Looks like bad stuff to me, the circles look fungal, the pinkness too, but I don't know. You definitely don't want that to spread to your healthy plants.

Your pink phals are really lovely. And I personally think the ones that throw branching spikes are the most glorious.

About your Nobby's Amy: that clearish, semi-transparent area in the front of the stump of the broken off leaf looks like a continuation of the infection to me. If I'm right, it will spread from there on into the stem and kill the plant.

You should treat that, imo. If you can, cut below it into the clean tissue. But I can see that's pretty tight there. If you can't, treat it with hydrogen peroxide, then dust with cinnamon is a good contact anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, so it is often a help when you aren't sure what's going on. I would dust the break of the leaf with it, and the top and bottom of any leaf that shows pitting for good measure. Keep a close eye on it to see if any other pitting begins. Also keep a close eye on the crown where that leaf was attached, see if any rotting spreads.

I've done that several times with pitted areas, or sunburn, or any bits of leaf damage that I couldn't be sure about. Whatever it was that I cinnamoned never spread. And next time, dust any pitted area with cinnamon just to be sure. Pits just aren't healthy, imo.

I would also keep it away from the others, but give it as much light and air as you can.

Al's Orchids website has some notes on treating crown rot in phals that are worth reading, both for the suggestions of how to use peroxide to treat, and also his statement that phals can seal off diseased tissue.
Good luck with it.

It isn't quite crown rot but your phal came awfully close. It wouldn't be the worst idea to wash out the crown with straight drugstore peroxide. Congrats on the spike(s). Is there, however, the slightest chance that your outdoor position is so sheltered as to be barely better than a good spot indoors? I ask because of the general overly nice appearance of the leaves (other than the dead one) and the stubborn equestris.

H

Hint about fungal vs bacterial rots: bacterial rots are *fast*-- the whole plant can die in a couple of days. Fungal rots are slower. The fact that it took a week to take the leaf sounds fungal to me-- a bacterial rot would have the whole plant in that time, not just a leaf.

A little cold rain while it was outdoors could have started it, imo.

Thanks for the replies...Mehitabel - there was a lot of cold rain right before I brought it indoors...yipes, I didn't know infection spread that quickly! I won't be able to go back home and check on them until Wednesday....now I'm going to be worrying the entire time. Thanks for the warning!

Howard - yes, the plant was probably more sheltered than it should have been, light wise. Now that I think about it, the 'orchid table' was really not in a very good spot at all...I was under the delusion that my yard was bipolar in either deep shade or glaring all day sun, save for an area in between two apple trees which got dappled shade the entire day (I now know, after careful observation of my yard during the summer, that I have pockets where I have nice morning sun and afternoon shade which would probably have been a better candidate choice for my 'intermediate' light growers)

Anyway, I've realized that apple trees are terrible things to have above orchids (you can probably see the apple leaf in the media of Nobby's Amy...yikes...what terrible culture, you must be saying :( How embarassing). Falling apples and branches smash pots and orchids onto the ground (amazingly 0 casualties this summer), and the two trees were infested with fungus towards the end of the summer...spores were (are) likely everywhere. I shudder now to think about those spores dripping down onto the plants during rain.

Amazingly this is the only plant that has shown signs of disease (so far), but I am now paranoid so I will probably do a peroxide wash on everything. Is straight hydrogen peroxide harmless to the plant? Any parts I should be aware about not getting the H2O2 on?

What's really weird is that I have another noid phal which was sitting next to this one...it fell off the table more than 3 times throughout the course of the summer, and it's leaves are completely shredded (can you imagine? Tons of gaping wounds)..one of the leaves has deep pits (not really mushy) and weird yellow blotches, so I was sure it was a goner...I have it isolated and yet it's shown no signs of disease progression. Instead, in the last two weeks, it's been putting out a new leaf, roots and a spike....perhaps it received slightly more light/air movement than it's friend next door.

Anyway, I've spilled the beans on my awful orchid culture...my deepest darkest secrets have been revealed! Hopefully someone will read this and learn from my mistakes...I know I will! You *might* be wondering why I didn't bother moving all the plants, despite seeing the apples and the fungus on the leaves above...I think it's because everything was growing so happily in the summer, I felt I had things perfect. If things go well, why change em? Little did I know, some of these latent problems were just waiting to erupt when colder weather set in. In retrospect, I'm sure I could have found better conditions and had even better growth. It's all a learning curve! :D

Calvin, you're right, it's all a learning curve. I've used straight peroxide on the orchid and into the roots as well with no problems.

Don't forget to check out Al's culture notes on rot.

OMG, don't be embarrassed about your growing habits. You should see mine. Actually Howard was remarking that your leaves look so good (no sunburn) that they were underlit. Most plants summering outdoors look like they've been through a war.

Maybe it was some sort of apple fungus? Very weird.

Love the pretty purple phal.

Jane

Jane - yeah most of my phals in smaller pots tumbled over and got destroyed in appearance...it makes me sad, but the fact that their leaves are purple makes me happy so it's a trade off. That said, they could probably have taken even more light...I'll now better next time! I think I've learnd that sun+airmovement = no fungus.

I'm going home tomorrow to check out the plant (I couldn't wait till friday) so fingers are crossed! I'll be armed with peroxide.

Good luck. Be careful with the peroxide. I've had problems with it although others seem to love it.

Jane

The reddish leaf looks amazingly like fusarium(?) on Catt . Perhaps you could ask the person who owns the gallery what they did? alvin

Wow, good catch....