Phals with brown spots & their removal

[Onyx]

Hey there! I'm an orchid noob who is curious how drastic I should be with taking care of these new plants of mine. Let's be honest, the reason I have these two particular plants is because they were cheap and I really wanted to see if they could survive the horrible lighting in my room along with some other species, haha. I hope they do! Also, yes both have hard water spots on the leaves, near as I can tell -- the town I'm in has super hard water. When I swing by the store next I'll be picking up a jug of purified/distilled. Both of my phals were abused in the store -- they're both flowering too, but all the flowers look fine.

The little one was apparently yanked out of a larger arrangement and hidden in the back row, so who knows what it went through -- despite that, it's in the best shape of the two, near as I can tell. It appears to have some surface scarring and some slight browning on the tips of the leaves. There's a tiny bit of black on the edge of some of the scars. Does that mean they should be excised? Should I just keep an eye on them?

The big one was rescued from a hardware store and was stuck in a tiny tiny pot that it had somehow been squished out of like someone squeezed the bottom of the liner. The roots had more of a dehydration issue than anything, but a good deal of them seemed okay -- I guess it's hard for things to rot if they're spending 80% of their time in the air. I did an emergency repot on it because it didn't seem like it was at all inhabiting its old one, so we'll see what happens -- no big deal if the blooms drop early. It was in one of those like.. plastic sleeve things for bouquets as well so its leaves were all bent upwards, leaving it hard to diagnose while in the store. It does have brown spots , a yellow bottom leaf (age?), and other imperfections including what seems to be a scrape on one top leaf and some wrinkling near where it was bent upward pretty strongly. The brown spots don't really seem squishy like in some descriptions -- but should it be cut out? I'm tempted to remove the yellow leaf as well -- can it just be snipped off close to the base and the wound hit with a bit of cinnamon like is done for roots? Again, should this all just be "stuff to keep an eye on" or remove ASAP?

My main question is what's the theory for cutting out bad spots like that? For ones near the edge do you basically just take a "bite" out of the side of the leaf? What about near the center? Do you worry about cutting through the middle vein of the leaf? Does cinnamon work well on the cut edges, or what's the best (cheap, recent grad here) option? Do I need to become a plant surgeon?! Thanks for any help!

[Onyx]

Now that light isn't fading away, I wanted to get some better pictures of the big phal.

I think the big spot might be a little worse than it was originally as far as yellowing goes, but the rest of the plant looks consistent with the night before. I'm not 100% sure though, again, because of the difference in lighting.


Also is there some secret trick to getting thumbnails to display for the attachments? Obviously it didn't work last time but did this time, strangely enough.

[NYCorchidman]

As tempting a low price might be to you, I would receommend that you get plants based on the condition they are in rather than just a low price.

Plants with any mark on the leaves are never good choice. It could be just mechanical damage, but that could also invite bacterial or fungal infection.
The dark marks could also mean signs of disease of various kinds caused by bacteria, fungi, virus or sunburn.
I do not think yours is showing sunburn.
The last picture showing a large dark mark looks to me like an infection of some sort.
Make sure they are getting bigger or showing up else where on leaves.
The first two pictures, I'm guessing (hoping) mechanical damage, but could also be infection again.
If the appearance bothers you, just trim off those affected leaves. As long as it is just one or two leaves and plants have lots of leaves, cutting leaves won't hurt plants much and they will grow some new ones to make up for that.

[Onyx]

Thank you for the reply.

As far as removing at least that one big spot goes, what's the theory of how to remove it? Do you just cut out the section of the leaf it was in and leave as much as possible of the rest? Or is the only real option to take off the whole leaf? It looks relatively easy to remove that one without crossing the middle of the leaf. That's part of my issue -- people say to remove stuff but don't say to be conservative or drastic with the cutting. The rest of the leaf does look pretty much okay, so if it's okay to leave the rest, I'd rather do that.

Other than that, I think I'll also remove the yellow leaf and just keep an eye on the other leaf on that side, at least for now. I think that they probably are mostly mechanical damage.

I suppose in a way I'd rather learn how to fix things on a plant I know wasn't in great shape than on my favorite if something goes wrong later, heh.

[NYCorchidman]

Well, let's first say the spots are not caused by infection (in which case, cutting the entire leaf is probably a good idea), then how much you cut is totally up to you.
Although partial cutting might make the plant look funny, you leave more on the plant and plant can use that extra surface to make that much more food for itself as compared to when the entire leaf is chopped off.

When you do decide to cut off just the affected area, you might want to cut into some healthy tissue not just around the edge of the dark spot.
then dust the wound with sulfur. if not, cinnamon can help dry it up.

I personally never pick up plants that look sick. It's just not worth it for me as I have lots of plants and do not want to risk spreading something on my plants.
Also, battle over diseased plants is usually not successful and time consuming. I do not want to use strong chemical in the home either.
The best is to start with healthy plants and keep them that way.

The only way I would consider "rescue" plants is that I know the plants are suffering from dehydration or mechanical damage done by my part so I know its' mechanical damage for sure, and most important, the plants are very important to me or very nice or rare.

Many of these mass produced phals have virus which may or may not show their presence. so any phal with any funny stuff on the leaves, I never even go near! but that's just me. lol

[Onyx]

I think on that one spot I was thinking of giving it a 3/8" margin, give or take -- more on the sides to make it look nice. Is it okay to cut through the middle vein of the leaf when removing stuff? After that I'll see what it does. Hopefully it just perks up a bit, hah.

Yeah I don't have many plants. I went for bargin bins to test the light I have here vs various species -- so a $3 dracaena, a $4 African violet, etc. I have a grand total of 5 plants as my test subjects. I'm not gonna be out much if they come down with plague, hah. If later on it turns out I can keep 'em alive (or move to a place with better light), yeah, I'm going to be quite picky about what I bring home after that. As it is, that phal has been kicked to the other room so it doesn't contaminate the small one or anything. The lighting in there isn't quite as nice in comparison, though.

[NYCorchidman]

Yeah, I have cut through the mid vein of leaves before (not orchids, but essentially the same for plants in general I guess) and it was fine. I guess plants find other routes when the main channel is disrupted somehow.

[Onyx]

Well, just completed orchid surgery.

Ended up removing both black spots and the one leaf that had a lot of mechanical damage -- it looked like it was on its way out anyway. The yellow leaf beat me to the punch and came off naturally. All that's left is nice green leaf, no yellow. Guess now I just get to sit back and wait.

Thank you again!

[NYCorchidman]

looks good