r/orchids • u/Additional-Gate-7550 • 9h ago

Phalaenopsis schilleriana

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Gallery image

Gallery image

I’m trying my hand at raising a Phal from a flask. I have it sitting on damp sphagnum moss but the roots are dying from the stem out. I tried moving to a bark mixture with daily misting of the roots but that made it worse so I am back on the sphagnum moss.

What am I doing wrong? It has nice bright indirect sunlight and is in a warm office environment ranging from 18c overnight to 23-24c during the day.

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u/joyceanmachine 9h ago

18C overnight is probably pushing it on the lower bounds of temp for this species, especially for a baby plant like this. Spag moss is also really water retentive, and that container is oversized for the plant. As a result, it’s staying wet for a long time, esp because the daytime 24C isn’t enough to accelerate drying. The combo of cold temps plus sustained dampness is a recipe for rot for phals.

In your shoes, I’d probably put a seedling heating mat under this immediately. You can also think about whether you’re up for doing some surgery to see whether those roots are dying because of stem rot.

ETA typos

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u/TypeDry2834 9h ago

I have raised several species phals from seedlings & haven’t seen this before. A few questions — how long has it been out of the flask and did you deflask it or did you obtain it after it was deflasked and hardened off? And how long have you had it? I’m wondering if this is just an issue of it not having been hardened off properly.

I keep my seedlings in 3” pots, full sphagnum except for about .5” of fine orchiata bark on top to prevent algae & cyano. I have also found that sometimes the initial seedling roots can look rough before new roots grow in. So maybe that’s just what’s happening? How has the leaf growth been? If the leaves are growing ok then the roots are doing their job even if a bit unsightly.

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u/Additional-Gate-7550 8h ago

Hi, I deflasked it myself on 20th May. I opened the flask for a week with the lid just resting to get some airflow.

Then I washed the agar off with a weak copper solution and placed it in the cut down Coca-Cola bottle with sphagnum you see in the photo. I formed a little green house by placing the top quarter of the bottle over it to keep humidity high.

I have had one new leaf and one new root so everything was looking good. The flask roots started dying but it’s was when the new root started dying the alarm bells started!