Dear Diana

I couldn't help becoming a bit sad when I saw the pictures of your
plants. It is a nightmare for orchid lovers/collectors.

I have been collecting and also studying orchids for many years here
in Denmark. I worked as a biologist with your goverment and had my own
interests in our native orchids beside my tropical collections.
Enough about my background.

To me it looks like your plants have been exposed to something
chemical and the plants have been weakened. In their weakness the
plants could not defend them selves aginst the bacterias/parasites
that were already there. Try to determine the common signs (eg. the
yellowing of the leaves) and seperate them from the other ones
seperately.

I looks to me as there has been some chemical influence on your
plants.
Phalaenopsis are the orchids with the strongest survival capacities of
all. I've had plants that was drowned and totally dried out for month
without loosing them. The came strong out and bloomed again.

My best advice to you is:
Take you plants out of the old compost/soil and wash them thoroughly
many times and repot in fresh compost/soil.
Do not use any chemicals at all, it might damage them (and the
mychorhiza) even more. The result could be that you kill them
completely.
Your plants need a good rest without too much water after repotting
(and washing). Let them dry out a bit. Their natural survival
processes will take over after a while.

Kindly

Alan

On Mon, 4 Dec 2006 11:39:56 -0500, "Diana Kulaga"
wrote:

I just posted the following to rgo. It is *not* cross posted. I hope someone
can ID this mess. Will post the pictures in succession in this thread.

Well, we have a little problem here. Walked out on the patio on Friday
morning and saw severe damage to a number of Phals. Mind you, seeing them
every day is unavoidable, so I can assure you that these probs were not
evident the day before. Clearly, something had been in the works, but I
hadn't noticed.

The leaves are turning yellow starting at the outer edges. The under sides
of the leaves look moldy and pitted. Some of them have what look like sunken
areas on the top of the leaves, but those are not soft. There is no sign of
snails/slugs, and those things would be unlikely to find them where they
live. There is no big web infestation, so I don't think it's spider mites.
My guess is some kind of mites, however. Saturday we sprayed everything
(*everything*!) with soap and oil with some alcohol thrown in for good
measure - 6 tb/gallon.

Pictures going up in abpo in 1 minute. I'm really worried. Here I teach a
class for newbies, and look what I've got.

Diana