Cattleya dying from black spots! Virus or fungus? Is it too late? - Orchid Board

Miffy · #1 10-25-2008, 04:19 PM

I have had this Catt for about 5 months. I started misting the plant about a month or two ago thinking it would help it. I came back from a trip one weekend and saw some suspicious black spots (streaks?) on a couple of the leaves. One leaf started to yellow as the black almost covered half of the leaf and it fell off from it's pseudo bulb. I've lost 3 leaves in a week now. Is this a virus or fungus?

The black area is not mushy but can be seen from both sides of the plant. It seems to be "inside" the leaves, and now the black spots are appearing inside the pseudo bulbs of all the shoots.

I read on one of the forums that it is BAD to mist Catts so I stopped misting and watering and quarantined the plant to another room from my other orchids.. What should I do? Is it too late to save the plant? The plant recently developed two new shoots, so I am sad to see this guy go...

I'm new to orchids (only about 1yr) but this is my first orchid that has gotten this sick.

I have read on other posts about physan 20 for fungus, but I am not sure if this is fungus... also, I don't know of any stores that carries this product. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone can give me advice on how to help this plant... and products that can be bought at a place like homedepot would help also!

**I updated my pictures. Sorry they were small! The two leaves with black/yellow spot on the 4th picture is from a sunburn. They were like that when I bought it and haven't gotten bigger or changed in any way. The black virus/fungus like spots I'm referring to in the above text is shown on the 1,2,3,5,6 pictures, and they have been spreading quite rapidly in the past 2 weeks and killed 3 leaves.