yellowing leaves

[BD11]

Hi I was wondering if anyone could tell me if the yellowing of these leaves on this cattleya is normal or not. I have a few more cattleyas but I have not seen this before.


Two of the small bulbs seem to have leaves that are yellowing at the base and then falling off. One has lost both leaves and the other has one leaf yellowing that expect will fall off soon to.


The first picture is of the problem area and the second is the whole plant for reference.

Thanks

[Dollythehun]

No pictures...

[BD11]

sorry thought I attached them.

[Ray]

While it is normal for a plant to resorb the water and nutrients from old growths and have them fade away, the fact that this appears to be happening from the bottom up suggests an issue with the roots and rhizome; probably time to remove that part of the plant and repot.

[BD11]

Yeah I thought about a repot but I try not to repot until I see new growth. This one I might just go ahead and repot tomorrow. It looks like the roots are going around the pot and they are coming out of the bottom as well.


I have not had it very long so I don't know how old the medium is either.

[BD11]

I repotted my Cattleya and I thought I would share the results. I think Ray was right that it was a root issue butt this is only the 2nd Cattleya I have repotted so I could always be wrong.

The part that had the two real small bulbs that the leaves fall off of seemed to be attached to a lot of dead roots. In fact, when I was running water over the roots to clean all the previous medium off that part of the plant just sort of fell off. I don’t think I was being rough because I have had a lot harder time getting medium out of some of the oncidiums that I have repotted. This medium came off quite easily.

Therefore, I took the big part of the plant and repotted in the same pot with mostly bark and a small amount of moss mixed in. One other thing I noticed is the roots were really attached to this pot. Some of them would not detach but most of them I was able to loosen by slightly wetting them.

Overall I think repotting was a good idea although I do like to wait until I see new growth before I disturb any of my orchids.

[dounoharm]

I do not like the looks of that....what will most likely occur if you leave it is this....everything yellow will die, and rather than just dying, it will creep thru the rhyzome to the next psydobulb and kill that one...ect.

personally, I would sterilize my knife and scissors and get to work on that one....cut everything off that is yellowing. examine very closely the center of the cut rhizome. if there is any thing left, you can isolate the remains. I do not pot such a thing as I want to check it frequently. I drop it in an old coffee container with a bit of pea gravel in it....snip all the ugly roots off. spray often as you can think about it with a physan 10% solution. any time you see any more of the yellowing cut it again.

most times the plant wil die....I have saved a few plants this way, and its interesting to see nature unfold...good, bad, and ugly...its natures way...

please do not hesitate to experiment, you learn a lot by doing so.....but this is the reason you have to isolate new plants for a month or so....its a sneaky bacterial rot....I depend on physan a lot, and its big brother, photon....I use that at least twice a year, just to make sure nothing is fomenting in my collection....

[Roberta]

You are correct about waiting until you see new growth, if possible. But sometimes, especially on a new acquisition that may be long-overdue for repotting, it's better to set it back a little by repotting before the ideal time than to lose it to rot. The part that fell off your plant was ready to be removed at any rate. (If it hadn't fallen off of its own accord, you would have wanted to cut it off, just taking up room and serving no purpose) Healthy Catt roots likely will cling to the pot, no worries there. But they'll be happier in that fresh medium, for certain. In fact, in the future if you find it clinging to the pot, you can just leave those roots in place, dump out what you can of the old medium (don't worry about getting it all) and fill in with new stuff. Then, it typically won't even notice the repotting, because the good roots are undisturbed.

[BD11]

Here is a picture of the plant now after the repot. I just threw the part that fell off in the trash. The healthy part that I repotted I did cut a few dead roots off of but overall the roots looked good. I guess time will tell.

I agree they can recover from loss of roots. The other one I repotted I had to cut a lot of roots off of it. It didn't have new growth at the time either but badly needed a repot. It now has two new growths so hopefully in a few months this will too.