Virus?

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Jo, I had a few suspect plants similar to yours pictured that I was "sure" were virused. Sent off samples to Critter Creek and they were clean. If they are worth the $5 each test, then yes send a sample. If not worth a $5 test, chuck them.
 
It is absolutely NOT a virus for sure.

I am certain some are cercospora ( the first few photos), and the last is either phillosticta or a kind of guignardia, maybe colletotrichium, but all are absolutely fungal diseases.

Try to get triadimefon ( was sold before under the name Bayleton), tank mix with azoxystrobin ( heritage, ortiva are two tradenames). You should expect some of the leaves to become yellow and fall if they were too affected, but you can cure all those plants easily this way.

As it is a fungal disease, you must treat, because this kind of leaf fungus spread very easily...

As for the viruses in cattleya and phalaenopsis, there are even new types of virus that surfaced recently in the pot plant industry, very damaging ones ( Fleck Virus is not one of them, as it usually makes so much damage to the plants that they die pretty quickly, and the infection diffusion stops by itself that way, I have not heard any Fleck Virused plant for years now...). It is the fact of only two or three meganurseries in Asia, and indeed they can prove to kill other plants, such as species orchids, where they will be asymptomatic in pot plant hybrids, that's indeed the problem.
 
Systemic fungicide is banned in Canada hence we cannot get them freely here.

Without a systemic, it is indeed a very serious problem, only systemic fungicides can get rid of most fungal disease...
 
Without a systemic, it is indeed a very serious problem, only systemic fungicides can get rid of most fungal disease...

Agreed, powdered form and cinammon isn't just good enough. They are okay to seal cuts but for an infected plant like this. Not so much.

Sorry Jo.
 
There are safe sprays to get rid of thrips, and violet oil mixed with soap, alcohol will work on mealies. Mites?? IDK! :eek: Good luck. For sealing cuts Captan powder. (Is that still legal?)
 
There are safe sprays to get rid of thrips, and violet oil mixed with soap, alcohol will work on mealies. Mites?? IDK! :eek: Good luck. For sealing cuts Captan powder. (Is that still legal?)

There is no safe spray to really get rid of thrips in a timely manner, to avoid virus spread. Only strong systemic insecticides can kill all stages of thrips. Many species have a life as larvae in the potting mix, and another bunch of species like thrips palmii, in the crown of the plant, very deep, and at the junction of the roots and the plant base. You can kill the successive generations with several applications, but that's it...
 
Systemic fungicide is banned in Canada hence we cannot get them freely here.

It is unfortunate we can't get a good systemic fungicide and pesticide! Really sucks because hobbyist are not the major polluters .... its the commercial farmers!

Paphman910
 
I only see thrips pretty much in my phrags, and only one or two in a few plants. I don't think any of my plants have mites and I see very few plants with mealy bugs; and even the ones that do only have one or two visible. Thrips don't take too well to being jabbed with an alcohol dipped toothpick. :poke:
 
It is unfortunate we can't get a good systemic fungicide and pesticide! Really sucks because hobbyist are not the major polluters .... its the commercial farmers!

Paphman910


But when peope use "strong" pesticides in their home or on their garden, on their lawn they are directly in contact with dangerous products... and I knew many people that don't use them safely.
 
It is true nowadays that a person can get stronger pesticides in lowes and home depot than the commercial nurseries can.... and the packages have fewer warnings for the home user. I think the justification the state uses is that there are fewer volume users that buy things at lowes and home depot, so they aren't worried as much by a home user getting exposed once or twice, but repeated exposures by commercial sprayers. Seems odd to me, as one systemic I bought in a tiny bottle at agway a few years ago I looked up the toxicity on a msds chart to see how much it would take to kill me (or my dog at the time), and on a chart of about 40 pesticides this bottle available for home users was number two on the chart :eek:

Roth mentions Heritage; it's pretty safe and actually only has a msds of four hours, which means in a home environment or sprayed out on your lawn you shouldn't touch until it's dry. also for thrip or fungus gnats, a few of the yellow and or blue sticky cards around your plants for a few months will get rid of a lot. a few shots of rubbing alcohol occasionally into leaf crevices will also help with that. once I moved to my new apartment and I had fungus gnats, I got a bunch of yellow sticky cards from work and put them all around the boxes of my plants, and the population has dropped drastically. the mealybugs were also many of a certain variety where the males fly around, and I was told that blue sticky cards will catch them, so those populations will diminish because no fertilization. don't think it works for standard long-tailed mealybugs though but that population has dropped as well using the sticky cards.

the thrip in this area are orange with a black dot or two on them.. are these the ones that you are seeing? they are tiny (western flower thrip)

The sucrashield ray has (or had until it runs out) will work for all stages of thrips. A new product called ovation or overture works for western flower thrip, but as I think it is somewhat systemic they probably won't allow it in canada.
 
Hey Joanne, sorry to hear of your troubled plants. Personally, I'd get rid of the really badly effected plants immediately. I used to keep plants that had problems to try to nurse them back to health, but it just isn't worth it, especially if your entire collection is in jeopardy.

In Japan there are all sorts of virus problems. In Calanthe collections in particular, virus is the big fear. Before micropropagation of these (starting 3 decades ago), plants were collected from the wild directly. Many had virus and over time this spread from collection to collection such that by the mid to late 70's it seemed the entire hobby of growing them was going to disappear as whole collections became infested. As stated, the only way to handle a virused plant is to burn it (and the compost), throw away the pot, etc.

Today Calanthe are produced in the thousands yearly, so there is always new blood. Still, growers have to be ever vigilant for virus signs - any questions about a plant means its immediate destruction - a pretty common thing in a large collection.

I wish you the best with your plants. A bummer. Agreed about strong chemicals in a house too - no thanks!
 
For Joanne plants, she needs to get a systemic fungicide, or eventually use something like captan or mancozeb sprays for some months to avoid new contamination, and destroy any infected plants... Those leaf spot fungus are really contagious indeed. Though the systemic fungicide would solve the problem within days.

In Japan there are all sorts of virus problems. In Calanthe collections in particular, virus is the big fear. Before micropropagation of these (starting 3 decades ago), plants were collected from the wild directly. Many had virus and over time this spread from collection to collection such that by the mid to late 70's it seemed the entire hobby of growing them was going to disappear as whole collections became infested.
Today Calanthe are produced in the thousands yearly, so there is always new blood. Still, growers have to be ever vigilant for virus signs - any questions about a plant means its immediate destruction - a pretty common thing in a large collection.

The problem is very different in fact... The Japanese put high prize on many plants, then they divide them to sell divisions at very high price, like the cymbidium, neofinetia before, calanthe. They use the 'all traditional' crap bullshit way, with the scissors made of a 'traditional metal' specifically for the bonsai, and they believed ( still do...) in magic, the metal of the scissors will avoid any diseases, etc... so they never disinfect those scissors ( that are made in metals that cannot be heated without tampering it)...

They contaminated heaps of plants that way, and indeed when testing some cymbidium goeringii, we find viruses. By making propagation and new generations, they avoid seeing the symptoms for a while, until they use their magic scissors..., or for tissue culture until the viral load is high enough (about the time the seedlings are mature). Same in Korea so far.

Calanthe and lycaste are infamous too for catching a wide range of viruses that do not damage our tropical orchids, these are real virus magnets. They can catch even common garden viruses. The Japanese got a lot of problems too with ORSV and calanthe, mostly because two large nurseries who made the first calanthe hybrids ( like Kozu, etc...) used to grow odontoglossum for cut flower... and calanthe is very sensitive to ORSV.

What most Japanese believe too to be a virus in the 60's in calanthe, and wiped out most of their plants was not a virus but a mycoplasm.

As a basis, the wild calanthe nearly never have any virus, but they became all contaminated because of poor culture practice, and poor insect control...
 
Hey! :poke: Don't even go there. This is a nice thread. :mad:

And thanks again everyone for chiming in; this is a great discussion, imho.
 
Update!

I finally got around to using the Agdia ImmunoStrips to test some of my orchids for virus. I tested four orchids and they all showed negative for Cymbidum Mosaic Virus and Odontoglossum Ringspot Virus. I chucked all four plants anyways as the plants looked like crap, and I tossed another six or so that looked suspect at the same time.

Epc. Siam Jade
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