I have never seen thrip damage that looked like the bump on your cattleya
orchid flower picture. Damage from thrip feeding and egg laying behavior
looks like streaks and flecks of off color tissue and thin, just below the
tissue surface very short burrowing-type marks and they are generally very
thin and hard to see unless there is a big infestation. Eggs and instars
are barely visible without magnification Adults are about 1mm. Nothing I
know to be associated with thrips makes a structure that large or soundless
like what you have described.

If they are not a scale type insect, I would say then that they look like
galls to me and galls can be associated with insect activity but they are a
plant tissue's response to an irritation of some kind, be it
bacterial/fungus/virus, insect, chemical or abrasion. I have never seen a
gall example on flower tissue before, so I can only point out that "gall"
are a catch-all term for what is in your picture and fits your verbal
description and the 'cure' for a gall depends on what's causing it. I have
never heard of thrips being listed among the irritants that cause plants to
form galls.

I can't say what it is, but I would *not* conclude it was thrip damage or
thrip egg laying damage from this picture of the bump alone. Since I don't
know what it is, I can't even begin to know what you can apply to stop it.
Is there a local entomologist near you or someplace you can send a sample?
Or even a microscope so you can see what it looks like under magnification?

I hope you can fix it whatever it is. ;-)

"K Barrett" wrote in message
news:bVSQb.116299$5V2.588192@attbi_s53...
Some time ago Diana asked about hard bumps she found on her catts.

I finally found an example of the hard bumps I get on mine.

http://www.orchidtrek.com/thrip.scalea.JPG

http://www.orchidtrek.com/thrip.scaleb.JPG

These "look" like scale or mealies, but they are not. In the picture it
almost looks like you can see antennae, but they aren't.

These do not mash. They are hard like a wart, dug in like a blister in the
flesh of the lip.

Ever seen anything like this before??

After looking at the AOS mag I have come to believe there are thrips in my
collection, and that will bring me to my second question in a second.

But first, do thrips live/breed inside plant tissue?

I'm going to spray with OrtheneWP. In order to get this under control,
since today is a sunny day I'll water first then then apply the systemic.
Its winter and its cold in the GH (70 high, 59-60 low). I'm going to turn
up the heat so the collection is dry by nightfall. I've been keeping the
plants dry, because I don't want them to rot in the winter cold, however I
think I've been keeping them *too* dry and now disease has started in the
debilitated plants.

My second question is, *should* I water 1st then use the systemic? I'm
going to anyway, because I think it'll be a shock to the roots to be hit
with water AND chemicals at the same time, from a TDS standpoint, not from
a
chemical standpoint. Granted this may decrease the uptake of the
systemic,
but I just don't want to hit their dry roots with too much. I'm just
asking
for next time. Since I'll have to do this again next week.

K Barrett