Oddly purple/red new phal leaf

[Optimist]

It is anthrocyanine, a pigment used by plants to protect their leaves, and usually means the plant is recieving the maximum of sun it should get, otherwise it is perfectly safe and healthy. Remember all that stuff about why plants are green? Green is a part of the light spectrum being rejected by the chromablasts (and chromaplasts) in the upper cells of the plant's leaves-- like melalin in people and animals. Color is a matter of "rejected" light waves. So what is happening is that the plant is also rejecting a bit of the red and violet light waves as well.

You can see that chlorophyll absorbs strongly in the blue and red parts of the spectrum, but absorbs almost no light in the green part – and that's why plants are green. Green light isn't absorbed so it gets reflected, and that's what we see when we look at a tree.

I was always told to place your plant where the leaves get just a touch of that red/violet color and they will be in a perfectly happy space. Cattleyas take quite a bit more and can be in full sun in most lattitudes, phalenopsis take much less, being understory plants.

This spring look at many of your plants in a garden and you will see that immature (unhardened) leaf growth is often red (this is very obvious in Roses).