Wall of Shame

[Redflytrap]

Thez_yo ; Unfortunately your Phalaenopsis stuartiana looks very desiccated.
This plant comes from the tropical jungles of the Philippines, 300 ft elevation.
This species needs much shadier conditions and good humidity.
It looks to be getting too much light. Also, this orchid likes to be kept much more moist,
as it doesn't have a dry rest period. It simply likes to "dry" out between waterings.
Orchids don't like being saturated.
However, the bark you have it in basically needs to be watered every/every other day,
as it must dry out too fast.
Remember, a dry phalaenopsis is a dead phalaenopsis

Good luck nursing your plants back to health

[jimscott]

I wouldn't worry about the U. longifolia, like U. bisquamata & U. subulata, it's not possible to kill this species.

A microwave works!

[TheFury]

Have you examined any of those damaged leaves with a magnifying glass to see if any parasites might be present.

Yeah, I did find a number of little white aphids on a bunch of my plants. It seems that the D. capensis I posted above, which I received in a trade, was a trojan horse carrying hundreds of the things. Before long, several of my plants were infested, including those above. Ultimately I think I got rid of them with repeated carpet bombings of neem oil, but not before I had lost one or two plants. That drastic a treatment took its toll too. On the bright side, I think I'm in the clear.

[thez_yo]

Thez_yo ; Unfortunately your Phalaenopsis stuartiana looks very desiccated.
This plant comes from the tropical jungles of the Philippines, 300 ft elevation.
This species needs much shadier conditions and good humidity.
It looks to be getting too much light. Also, this orchid likes to be kept much more moist,
as it doesn't have a dry rest period. It simply likes to "dry" out between waterings.
Orchids don't like being saturated.
However, the bark you have it in basically needs to be watered every/every other day,
as it must dry out too fast.
Remember, a dry phalaenopsis is a dead phalaenopsis

Good luck nursing your plants back to health

Well that would explain it.... I need to heat the poor baby up

[jimscott]

I think we have all experienced these sorts of unseemly looking plants. I'll bet even Fischermans & Avery have had a few! I know I have. They're just not as photogenic!

[MH1]

... Well, I have some capensis on windowsills due to lack of space, but in the winter there is little direct light... and I tend to forget to water them... maybe for weeks at a time...



(I have just watered them now... not sure if they can be salvaged, but the reason they are there is that I did a 'rescue' thinking I had gotten about 6-8 plants for the price of 1, LOL JK I got 25 )

And this was a... not-so-inflated than it should be after my messy unpotting:



And plants that I have not seen since September and I will probably not see untill next easter (watered via and irrigation pipes) I have shown these before, but hey... it is a wall of shame, no?



and my absolute favourite, a once healthy Pinguicula:



I only have my trusty digital camera for photos... as Jim said, my fails are just much less photogenic!

I could probably find before and after pics, but this is a wall of shame! It just wouldn't do!

[jimscott]

LOL! That looks like planifolia and my lutea and my....

[MH1]

LOL! That looks like planifolia and my lutea and my....

Haha glad it's not just me then! I think it is (was) a Pinguicula 'Tina'... although, I don't think a nicely crisped P. lutea/P. planifolia is as shameful as a deep-fried Mexican Ping...

To be honest, i find the spectacular fails of mine quite amusing, but then again, I do have a weird sense of humour, and as a begginer, I don't have any plants that are worth more than £10. S'all a learning curve, really!

(The backstory of it is that I read on the ICPS site that some mexican pings (like P. moranensis can stand being in a temperate bog during the winter in Washington state... I figured that since that was a zone 8, and where the crisped ping was, was what I figured to be a zone 9 in France, so the zone difference would mean I could get away with them just being in a pot... I wasn't quite expecting it to snow!(although it does happen every few years). D'OH!)