Hi, Kelly. What I see is a nice, big, healthy phal.

Your roots are great. The black place where the roots attach low down on the stem (to the right of your second picture, yes, that's rot. But it's really the oldest part of the stem, and having that black off is common. Cut that off with a sterile razor blade (or if too tought, cut with a sterile pruner)

Cut into good green flesh, ie cut off *all* of the rot. You'll lose some roots with it, but they're gonners anyway, with the attachment to the stem black. It'll grow more in the good light you're giving it.

If you only have a few roots left after the cut, you may want to bag the leaves. I just put one baggies over the leaves on one side, and another over the leaves on the other side, leaving the crown (center) open to air.

Wouldn't hurt to just give it a nice 20' soak in water with a drop or two of superthrive in it before repotting. Then dust the cut and repot into the sphag.

Use a smallish pot--nothing as big as that blue pot. Use a pot just a little bigger than the roots.

You want the sphag moist, but not really wet, especially in a plastic pot. So squeeze it out a little and then fluff it out again before putting the orchid into it, . Let it dry out to barely moist before watering again.

My bet is it will start growing new roots fairly quickly, especially with your good lights. It's ok to start using Dyna Grow on it-- it's quite a healthy plant.

And congrats on your spikes.

You're doing great!

Hi,
Your photos are a bit fuzzy so it is difficult to tell exactly what is going on. I do agree that the darker area is a concern. It does however look as if you have some roots that do not have the dark patches on top. If the dark area is mushy then you have a case of rot if not then leave it alone. If it is mushy then I would cut that part out, pour peroxide on it and then sprinkle the area you cut with cinnamon (it is anti fungal and anti bacterial and may help stop the spread.) It sounds like you have been doing some research into the care of your plant. Much of what you have been doing sounds good. However, DO NOT leave the medium VERY moist. Please wait until the moss is dry to water again. The humidity tray with pebbles does not increase humidity despite what many books say. It does however help catch any run off water from the pot after you water. Misting is not needed or recommended (it can lead to more rot) don't waste your time. Water only in the morning so that the plant has time to dry out during the day and make sure you are avoiding getting water in the crown which can cause rot. (you can mop up any water in the crown area with paper towel.) I would also keep the fan on to help circulate the air better and help the moss dry out. Not too sure that those are spikes you see. They look more like roots. Any way, Hope this helps. Good Luck!

Larissa

Why has this plant been out of the pot twice in 2 weeks? People dole that advise out much too freely if you have been reading back posts or lurking. Worst thing you can do to a plant, especially an ailing plant. 1 time a year or 2 is re-potting. I can see how one can get easily confused about that point. When the media (bark) is getting to look like dirt and is holding water, its time to see roots again and re-pot. The key here is not to hold any water at the roots. Orchids like a quick pass-by of water and then a dry off. Let the plant settle in. You are shocking it by "pot pulling:". That is one reason why she "appears to be in a coma". Orchids are very slow, delicate plants. You may not see improvement for some time. They don't react like a house plant.

Those are roots not spikes. Your plant will need those. You will want to put them into the substrate when they are long enough. Your plant is failing b/c your culture(care) is not right for the plant. Please visit the FAQ section of this site (ignore the light section) and use the search. There are many good posts on basic phal care. You may want to invest in "Taylor's Guide to Orchids". A basic understanding of orchid care should be the 1st step.

The plant should go in a terra cotta pot and some bark. You are an over-waterer and bark; a dry fast draining media will work best. especially in our climate. I live just down the road from you. Spag is not for someone who waters frequently. Ceramic is not a good choice for orchids. Plastic or Terra. Terra for someone who waters frequently. I advise against spagum moss in our area and with your culture level and the current state of the plant. Very open and very lose. The roots need to breathe.

No media was probably what saved this plant from death, especially in the ceramic pot and being in the dark, being kept moist all the time. Phals are not "moist all the time" kind of plants as you are seeing. Phals are dry plants relatively speaking by house plant standards. The cure for a sick pahl is not to water more but water less. May sound crazy but it's true. What is your watering frequency? You have to be watering an aweful lot to have moist spag with that light intensity and duration. How far is the light from the plant?

Hard to see in the pic but "sickly yellow/ green " is what phal roots look like. Even brown can be ok, provided they are not soft. Brown are old roots. They will help support the plant in the future and do uptake water. They need to remain. What happened to the rest of the roots? That plant is very large to have such a small root system. Were they cut? Why? Rot? How long has this been going on?

The black is likely rot. The photos are blurry. It looks like it is near the crown. Be very careful watering this plant. Crown rot is fatal. Avoid watering or misting near the "middle" of the plant. Treat the plant with Physan a systemic fungicid, a capful a gallon, give the plant a good wetting. You can pour an entire gallow through the freshly potted plant. Repeat in 10 days. I wouldn't float or soak a plant that has over-watering rot. The plant is already flooded with water. Get it on it's way to drying out and recovering. Don't cut anything else. Peroxide is a topical treatment for rot. I am not a fan of cinnamon as stated in the FAQ becasue it discourages growth. Your plant looks like it is suffering from rot very high up in the root system. You want to encourage new roots.

What are your temps? Is this plant just beneath a light or is there supplimental lighting from a window? a 55w cfl for 15-17 hours a day is too much in duration. Reduce the light to 14 hours a day. How far away is the plant from the light? A light reduction may be in order depending on how close it is presently. It is a rare day that anyone on this board to advise a light reduction. Your plat is in recovery. The light should be backed off. a 55w cfl is a lot for a phal. Weare talking about 55 actual watts correct? A really large bulb?

You care enough to give the proper light. That's a good thing! You simply need to learn more about basic orchid culture (care) and you will have a fantastic plant!

Clara

Hi, Clara. Regretfully, I have to disagree with some of what you say about Physan. Physan is powerful stuff and *can* harm roots if you pour it through, as I found to my sorrow. An occasional use as a pour-thru might be ok, but it should definitely not be used regularly as a pour-thru.

Also, as a treatment for rot, it's a *contact* bactericide and fungicide, not a systemic. The effect lasts only a couple of days. As a spray, it can be used to *prevent* rot, eg by spraying the crown or leaf juncture with a dilute solution when a prolonged or intense rainy period has kept the crown wet. This is per various vendors who have posted remedies for hurrican damage to orchids. Sorry I can't remember which ones. Some recommend "spraying" naked roots with a dilute solution when repotting.

Kelly, the two green-tipped growths among the leaves are indeed new roots, which is good. I don't see any sickness in your plant, beyond that old stem that is starting to rot and needs to go before it spreads.

If you check out Al's Orchids website, he discusses in detail how to treat phals for rot. It's a good discussion, and worth reading because he includes pictures.

If you want to learn more about growing phals, I suggest you read the culture notes at Bedford Orchids, Big Leaf Orchids and Robert Bedard Nurseries. Each has a slightly different slant, but you'll learn a lot from them.

About cinnamon-- I learned about its properties from Ray of s/h fame at First Ray's.

I repeat what Clara wrote - Why is this plant out of the pot??
Get it back in! It looks okay. Can't tell anything from the photos, but this plant needs to be in something.

One further thing about physan as a pour-thru: it has a detergent action, hence also acts as a wetting agent in the medium. So as a pour-thru it tends to keep the medium too wet.

Sorry to hijack your thread, Kelly.

I hope some other people will offer their advice for you.

I agree that Physan is not a systemic and only a contact product. Clara may have mixed Physan up with the Bayer All in One systemic product. The fungicide in this product is systemic in action as is the insecticide. Systemic in a plant means it travels up the plant and has no mode to travel down the plant. If you read the labels on the two bottles Physan has a danger warning which is the highest warning a product contains. The Bayer product carries a caution label, which is the weakest and safest to use.

A ceramic pot with holes is as good as a terra cotta pot, probably even better for drying out the medium. A solid ceramic pot would be the same as a plastic pot, neither can let air to the roots so are equal.

Most plants, including orchids have a survival instinct and phals are one of the toughest. Unlike many orchids which need to dry out, phals want their roots moist but not soggy. They can be grown successfully in most orchid mediums from sphag to bark to rocks to wood planks if you adjust your watering methods. It is up to the grower to decide what type of watering they want to provide for their plants.

Cinnamon is successful as a fungicide/bactericide because it sheds water from the applied area so additional harm is not done with moisture. Sphagnum also has the same properties in it and why it is used so often for sick plants, seedlings just out of flask into compots and then to individual baby pots.

Kelly pick a medium you are comfortable with, pot your plant in it, give it warmth and light and you should have spikes in your future. Orchids are only picky when you can't provide what the plant needs to thrive and will try their hardest to grow even when we don't meet their needs.

Brooke

Hi all, thanks SOooo much! Yes photos are kinda blurry so I took new photos just now - maybe these will help to figure out the Phal's plight?

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closeup of same, showing root rot area (best photo I could get - old camera, sorry!):
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and
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and
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The light is a 55 watt CFL (same as 150 watt incandescent I'm told). It's 22" from bottom of CFL bulb to top of roots. It sits on a dining room table that is 3' away from windows. Surrounded on all 3 sides by windows (North, West, & South facting), but we are on 3rd floor and surrounded by TREES also. This being Chicago in October, the light from the windows is very very little.

I am starting to think its overkill with the light since today I noticed the giant palm I have 3' away from this orchid (you can kinda see it in the photo) is actually turning RED where the light is shining on it. Sunburn right? If the PALM is having trouble handling the light I'm giving it, I have to wonder about my Phal which is DIRECTLY under it right?

Its only out of the pot b/c I wanted to show the root structure. Its usually in the plastic pot you see in the photo. :) It just barely fits in there as I didn't want to "overpot" it.

The funny thing about all this: last month I was going to 'pitch' this orchid. I was very disappointing in having nursed it along for 2 years now without a single bloom (of course I've been doing everything WRONG for the poor plant but I am only now realizing this!!) and I left it on the windowsill, no light, no water, roots bare to the elements, for 10 days. It responded to this neglect by putting forth the 2nd root (which I thought was a spike!). So I responded by making a big deal of it with the light and the fertilizer, and being moist all the time. And it responded to THAT by developing the black root thing.

My girlfriend said "you know it looked just FINE when you were just IGNORING it :^0 Maybe you should go back to doing that again?" Maybe I just don't have the patience. Is it normal to wait 2 years for a bloom?

I have many times repotted this poor little Phal, moved here room to room, sat it in various windows but never given it any "good" steady light (the CFL & timer is a new thing), often cut off the "bad" roots and treated with cinammon, and once it fell off a shelf and I had no potting medium so I just plopped it bare rooted into whatever was handiest. Its had a ROUGH life. I want to fix the situation now but am just not sure what to do.

Should I cut off the black parts as some of you suggest? Treat with cinammon and put the whole thing in bark, inside a terra cotta planter?

Or should I leave the black parts alone and put her back into BARELY moist spaghnum inside the usual plastic planter, with a fan on to dry the medium out? Is this whats called "sphag and bag"?

I'll be sure not to overwater or mist like I was doing before! I don't have any bark but if thats critical I could certainly get some.

I really appreciate your help! You are saving a really beautiful plant!! - Kelly

you don't need to sphag and bag, your plant looks pretty healthy to me. that's only needed in severe cases of root rot where there are not any healthy roots. most of the roots on yours look fine, the leaves look good and there are new roots growing. what do the black parts feel like? are they all mushy? i'd probably just leave them if i were you. i would not repot in sphag. put it in bark and water like once a week. i would leave it under the light. especially if you want it to bloom(and i'm sure you do!) unless it looks like it's getting burned. orchids need a lot more light than people think. thats why most people have trouble getting them to bloom again.

Decisions, decisions. We all have to make them every day, and we're never sure that we're right. But we have to decide anyway. Just do it, you'll never achieve certainty.

There is no *one* medium that is *the* right one. Different growers use different ones, depending on their conditions and watering habits and other preferences. If you read the culture notes on the specialist websites I mentioned, you'll find each is a little different, tho there are areas of agreement. Orchids I've gotten from different specialists have come in different media. As the Bishop said to the Actress, "It's an art, not a science".

I use sphag for phals, and I like it because I find it good for recovering phals, and that roots grow well in it.

Clara uses bark, and she likes it for her reasons, which may be the same ones.

It's your orchid, you are just going to have to decide. As far as I'm concerned, both bark and sphag are used by many specialists and hobbyists, and are ok. Bark can't be "critical", or no one would grow in sphag, or coconut husks, or clay pellets, etc.

The thing about rot is that it tends to spread, so I personally prefer to cut it off. It's like cleaning a wound. If you want to keep it, again, it's your orchid, go ahead and keep it. Cinnamon seals the cut and prevents new rot from entering. If you go to Al's Orchids you will find some good notes on dealing with rot, I recommend you do that, since you aren't sure how to proceed.

As for the light 22" away from a 55W CFL, that is not overkill by any means. Light falls off by *half* for every foot away from the source, so your phal at 22" away is getting about 1/4 of the light that bulb emits. My guess would be 500 footcandles or less. Full midday sun will burn a phal to mush, but that is 10,000 footcandles, more than 20 times what you are giving.

It's also true that the pothos and other green things you have near the phal do not need the amount of light to survive that a phal will need in order to bloom.

You have to *acclimate* a plant to more light, gradually increasing the light over a period of several weeks. Again, on the specialist websites I mentioned (Bedford, Big Leaf and Robert Bedard)--

on those websites, increased light is discussed as *the* primary factor in getting phals to bloom. If you want flowers you have to up the light.

The amount of light an acclimated phal can thrive in is very much greater than you think. I have some right now about 15" below a stationary 400W HID, and no burn whatever. But they didn't go under the HID from the interior of a room, they went there either from outside or from a south window.

You will feel less confused and more confidence in what you are doing if you do a little homework on your own.

"Its had a ROUGH life. I want to fix the situation now but am just not sure what to do."

Stop re-potting and get it back into a pot immediately. Chronic re-potting and "checking roots" is not the cure for an ailing orchid. Re-potting does not have any restorative health benefits. Think of it as someone dragging you from your warm home and throwing out into the cold naked :-) . You are "loving it to death", Kelly. That's generally what new people do with phals. There aren't too many people that have their very first orchid anymore. 2 years is a long time to still be nursing a plant along. Something is wrong. The next time you should see the roots is Spring '09 if you are using losely packed quality mix. Maybe longer. An orchid is simply not an experimental guinea pig. Disrupting it from a happy environment sets the plant back. When your eye is more developed, you will know something may be wrong just by looking at the leaves. You can adjust your culture without pulling it out of the pot.

My girlfriend said "you know it looked just FINE when you were just IGNORING it :^0 Maybe you should go back to doing that again?" Maybe I just don't have the patience. Is it normal to wait 2 years for a bloom?

Your girlfriend's observations were correct. Wise woman! Ignorance is bliss. You have seen by ignoring it, it did better. Orchids need tough love. No, Kelly it is not normal to wait 2 years for a phalaenopsis to flower. It should flower at minimum once a year. The orchid has been disrupted, over-watered and lost root mass to the point that flowering is not possible under current conditions. It will respond with rot, not flowers if you keep it moist in spag all the time.

Mehitabel uses HID lights. She can use spag. Vastly different conditions athan a single 55w cfl. Her lights produce more heat than a single cfl. Heat = more rapid dry time. I suggest bark if you are new to orchids, are an over waterer and have rot. A newbie and spag is simply recipe for disaster up in the Chicago area. We are dark, cool and rainy/humid all winter. We usually don't have enough heat to throw at an orchid. Cool, dark and wet is the exact recipe for rot. You will lose this plant very fast. It will take more time to adjust your watering arm. You don't want your plant to suffer as a consequence. You can put a little bit of spag on top of the bark to tease out new roots. Jane_NY calls it a "winter spag coat". It works like a charm to encourage new roots.

While your light is quite good, it will not produce enough heat to dry 100% spag in our climate. It is a challenging media for someone new to orchids. Its dries very unevenly. Spag also has the tendancy to become choking to the roots. It gets matted down after time. Your plant needs air at the roots. The restorative power of air is often under-estimated. These plants are open to air in nature. When an orchid goes outside for the summer, air is probably equal to light this far north. Lord knows we don't have heat.

I have an orchid hospital/orphanage. I also keep/manage orchids for people who can't. I see orchids that have been kept by others. They are mainly over-watered, under-light and rotted. I see attempts to save orchids too. I have a very difficult time saving a phal or any orchid that has undergone attempts to revive it. "Less is more".

If it were mine, I would put some peroxide on the area and call it good. Don't cut anything more. The rot is very high from what I can see. Put it back in the pot and leave it alone. Forget about fertiliser and use the ST for now. Train all the areial roots down into the media. Your plant has loss. The top and bottom need to be about the same to sustain the plant. Flowering will take a lot of energy.

I use cfl's too. You did the right thing in the light department! Way to go! Your lights are not causing your palm to burn. Have many of those. Sent the palms up when I moved to Chicago from Miami. The are going through a seasonal shedding cycle that is caused by the change in light and heat. They are too far away from your light. You will need to reduce their water in winter.
Park all your plants near your south window. Put the light 15" from those plants for 3 weeks and then move it to 10" for 3 weeks. About 5-6" is where you want to be. Duration for Nov =13 hours a day, December = 12 hours a day. You don't need the foil.

You don't mention temps but the higher the better. 76-80º is ideal if your heat bill can handle it. No lower than 60º nights. Near the window should produce the lower night temp. The closer light source should help a little too. Water it when it just gets to dry. That should be about 1 time a week or every 10 days at this time of year with the light duration mentioned above.

If you really want the plant to bloom you need to change what you are doing. At least 2 bloom cycles have been interupted if you have had the plant for 2 years. You may be able to flower the plant by spring or summer provided it stays in the pot and the conditions are held very steady.

It also think it wise to do your homework. The America Orchid Society is a non-biased place to begin for basic culture. (See link below).

Raising orchids is a discipline. People like to experiment with culture and rehabbing, especially when they are new, especially here. An orchid has a specific set of needs with very little latitude when all is said and done. If their needs are not met, it will not thrive or flower.

Clara

Great explanation, Clara. Since we seem to have lost the OP (probably ran away in horror), I think what this thread does show is the difference in growing styles. All work for the individual grower. That's the bottom line. You have to find the way which works for you personally. These plants are quite adaptable when their basic needs are met.

Your plant has lots of leaves and appears in good shape. Looking at little dark spots on the roots is meaningless. If the plant were in the pot (where it should be) you would not see those spots. You couldn't possibly have that amount of green growth without corresponding good roots. My guess is that you cut them off. That will cause loss of some leaves to balance things (don't worry it is normal), the plant will bounce back. Plant looks healthy.

If you put the plant back in sphag, leave it there. Just watch your watering. With your lighting, you should get spiking next fall.

Good luck,
Jane

Thank you all SO much! I will do as you suggest then and stop "loving it to death". LOL! I'm happy to know it is not in fatal state. Thanks again!!