What is this problem?

Bruce,

That could be a bacterial result or chemical. Have you sprayed them with anything?

Could someone have been cleaning and oversprayed and the chemical burned the leaf surface? Is it on all the leaves or just the older/newer ones?

Last winter I cleaned the floor in my greenhouse with a power washer. Some Phals were on the bottom shelf and the overspray of just water got on the leaves. I didn't think anything about it since it was only water. A couple of months later I had a bacterial marks all over the leaves. They are outgrowing it now and the new leaves are just fine. The old leaves look like crap and in another year they will be gone and I can show the plants again.

Good growing, Gene

Now that I am thinking about it, I see several ways I could have gotten chemicals on it. Just sprinkling Comet in the sink sends a fine cloud of chemical dust in the air.

Use the liquid sink cleaners. The dust from some cleaners is TOXIC and contains carcinogens. I no longer use comet in my sinks. I use liquid "Soft Scrub" gel.

Guess what my wife bought this week? :)

Being the guy I just automatically reached for the powder though, until I saw the dust drifting up to my orchids... Then I threw it away, only to watch more dust drift up out of the trash can :=()

There was a great deal of discussion at one time about this problem. I don't believe it's from comet or anything else like it. It was called 'mocrofungus' by some, but neither pesticides nor fungicides worked on it. Some guessed it was an as-yet unID'd virus. From all the postings I read it seemd it was most often eventually fatal to the plants, but some said they had plants eventually (2-4 years) grow out of it. There was some speculation as to its contagiousness and most folks who had it on a plant pitched the plant just in case.

I don't think there was ever a resolution to the issue, but it seemed to affect a lot of collections.

I believe it was Steve who lost his entire Phal collection over a couple of years. No resolution as to what it was.

I have recently dealt with phythium. Lucky me. Very nasty disease, but it didn't look like what Bruce (or Steve, for that matter) pictured.

Diana

Yeah, but he said the plant in question is a Dendrobium. My problem spread to and killed every Phal but I have never had a Dendrobium look anything like those pictures. Since I'm replying, all also add my thought that I don't believe there is a chance in the world that the pictured problem came from any household cleaner. I could see something splashing on a leaf and causing a few scattered spots but the leaves in the picture are affected wall to wall.

Steve

Diana Kulaga wrote: