# Strange twisted leaves and ridges on Paph. Hung Sheng Bay



## Jennifer Lynne (Jan 31, 2020)

Hi, 
This plant just arrived in my collection, I am new to paph growing. Can anyone tell me why the leaves look twisted on this plant? I also noticed the top leaves have strange high ridges. What causes this?

photo available here:


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## Ozpaph (Feb 1, 2020)

It could be low humidity/too dry. It sometimes happens in 'Maudiaes'.


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## eds (Feb 1, 2020)

I've got a Yellow Tiger with a couple of leaves similar to that that emerged not long after I got it. I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that is was lack of water during shipping. The new leaves are normal.


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## Jenny St. Michel (Feb 1, 2020)

I agree with the above comments. If everything else looks good than it could be past stress. If after some time the problem persist or worsens than I would start looking into other causes. When I get new plants I like to take pics and record their progress so that if a problem comes up I have a better record of how it started.


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## Jennifer Lynne (Feb 1, 2020)

Ozpaph said:


> It could be low humidity/too dry. It sometimes happens in 'Maudiaes'.


Okay, they just arrived from Hawaii, so maybe I need to water them and raise up the humidity a bit. Appreciate the comment!


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## Jennifer Lynne (Feb 1, 2020)

Jenny St. Michel said:


> I agree with the above comments. If everything else looks good than it could be past stress. If after some time the problem persist or worsens than I would start looking into other causes. When I get new plants I like to take pics and record their progress so that if a problem comes up I have a better record of how it started.


Good tip about the pictures, I will do that and try to straighten out the issue. Thank you!


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## NYEric (Feb 3, 2020)

Hi. Check the roots. If they are good, give it some water.


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## Hardwood (Feb 4, 2020)

In my collection, those leaves would be showing a shortage of Calcium at the leaves. Calcium is needed every day by the plant. It does not move from the old leaves to the new leaves. 
Now you need to discover the reason that calcium is lacking at the leaves. It could be bad roots. It could be some other mineral is blocking the uptake of calcium. Perhaps you are using RO water with no calcium.
In my greenhouse I was using water that had been softened with potassium chloride. The excess of potassium, filled up all the receptors for calcium and blocked the calcium from being passed up to the leaves.
You can treat with a cal mag supplement or you can make your own with Plaster of Paris (calcium sulfate) and Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate). use one tsp. each per gallon. 
https://staugorchidsociety.org/ has a good page on mineral nutrition.


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## Hardwood (Feb 4, 2020)

Adding on to the above message. It could also be that the calcium is precipitating out of your fertilizer mix. The university of Michigan fertilizer does have calcium in it, but if it is mixed too strong the calcium can turn to rock (limestone) and become unavailable to the plants. So the best advice is to re-pot the plant into new mix and use a cal mag supplement. The furrows in the leaves will never go away, you have to grow new leaves. The new part of the leaves can become flat in the middle of growing the leaves when you correct the lack of calcium. My plants are looking normal after I corrected my calcium leave deficiency.


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## NYEric (Feb 5, 2020)

by Cal-mag supplement you mean Epson salt?


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## Stone (Feb 5, 2020)

Ozpaph said:


> It could be low humidity/too dry. It sometimes happens in 'Maudiaes'.


Yep, this has nothing to do with calcium IMO. Usually lack of water uptake when the leaves are still very small. Lack of roots or not enough water/humidity as you say.


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## gego (Feb 6, 2020)

Jennifer Lynne said:


> Okay, they just arrived from Hawaii, so maybe I need to water them and raise up the humidity a bit. Appreciate the comment!


This will not happen overnight, not even over a week. This is a common sign of calcium deficiency along with high nitrogen. This will not go away. Only the new leaves will show recovery once the plant gets enough calcium.


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## Stone (Feb 6, 2020)

gego said:


> This will not happen overnight, not even over a week. This is a common sign of calcium deficiency along with high nitrogen. This will not go away. Only the new leaves will show recovery once the plant gets enough calcium.



What makes you so sure? Have you had leaves analysed? I have had plants do this right next to others that are fine and all receiving exactly the same treatment. I have a plant doing it right now after it was repotted and before that it was it was normal. I have had plants recover from this with no alteration to Ca or N application.


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## gego (Feb 6, 2020)

Experience, experiments and bad and good results.
The deficiency is not that you dont have any calcium provided. It is the in ability for the plant to uptake calcium or any nutrients for that matter. And we all know these, humidity, pH, form of molecule with cal, over fertilizing, root problems and dryness and even the structure of the potting will hinder the absorption of calcium.
There is no other nutrient that will deform, stunt a growth like that other than calcium. This abnormality will show on the new growth and will never go back to normal as the cells are already formed. 
We can't generalized all orchids will show the same deficiency to the same quantity of calcium available to them or the form of calcium applied to them. Plants that grows on lime or close to lime will be different than plants that grow on barks or in a more organic environment. Also fast growing plants are more susceptible because they need more for that fast growth.
If you have this same issue,,,and you do not have an answer yet, it does not hurt to play with this idea.
One thing I learned from experience and from this forum, the form of the source of calcium makes a lot of difference. 
I'm just sharing what I know and did to my plants when I have problems like this. There was a guy who use to share his knowledge here and I'm so grateful I had an open mind at that time. Some were just attacking what he was sharing and failed to understand his ideas.


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## orchid527 (Feb 7, 2020)

For what it's worth, I agree with Stone, not calcium deficiency. The times I've had calcium deficiency, new growth turned black, especially on phals and at higher temps. This was resolved by treating the plants with calcium citrate. The difference between the healthy new growth and old growth was stunning. No other changes were made. I suspect the distorted leaves are related to moisture problems. Whenever I see this on one of my plants, I check the tag and there is always a notation that the roots were in poor shape when it was last repotted. Regarding mineral deficiencies of any sort, the vascular tissue of these plants is lined with carboxylic acid ion-exchange sites. If you water with an abundance of any type of cation, that's what gets attached and is available to the plant. If you water with slightly acidic pure water for an extended period, you will have only hydrogen ions available. Of course, it is not this simple, but this is a fair explanation of the initial uptake of cations. Mike


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## gego (Feb 7, 2020)

If your roots are bad then uptake of calcium is no good. The plant can still grow and get N through the leaves. All other cations can be reused but not Ca. If because of bad roots the leaves are desiccated, the leaves will soften and tiny lines and wrinkles can be seen specially if you bend the leaf. When the wavy deformation just like that in the picture develops, the leaf is very thick and hard. It will crack if you force to flatten it. Maybe my experience is different. Anyway, thanks for your input.


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## Stone (Feb 7, 2020)

gego said:


> If your roots are bad then uptake of calcium is no good. The plant can still grow and get N through the leaves. All other cations can be reused but not Ca. If because of bad roots the leaves are desiccated, the leaves will soften and tiny lines and wrinkles can be seen specially if you bend the leaf. When the wavy deformation just like that in the picture develops, the leaf is very thick and hard. It will crack if you force to flatten it. Maybe my experience is different. Anyway, thanks for your input.


Don't forget too that a calcium deficiency results in lack of root growth especially the tips and hence they are very inefficient at taking up certain elements. So you _may _be looking at this problem back to front. It is quite rare for a Ca definiency unless a very acid medium and there is no Ca in the water. Too much ammonium will remove a lot of Ca as it is converted to nitrate so it needs to be replaced continuously - that's why Urea + limestone/dolomite seems to work so well - but as I said there is usually enough for most plants in municipal water. However I do regularly supply Ca as ground limestone especially for limestone plants. In the old days, most paphs were grown in fern fibre, mulch and moss and no other fertilizers were added so there was evidently enough Ca in the water. All my other non orchid plants do well with NKP and water without any Ca added. Modern orchid mixes tend to have much lower cation exchange capacity so the cations need constant replenishment.


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## Stone (Feb 7, 2020)

gego said:


> . There was a guy who use to share his knowledge here and I'm so grateful I had an open mind at that time. Some were just attacking what he was sharing and failed to understand his ideas.


Yes that was Rick - lovely bloke but his ideas about K and Ca were mostly nonsense.


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## gego (Feb 7, 2020)

Stone said:


> Don't forget too that a calcium deficiency results in lack of root growth especially the tips and hence they are very inefficient at taking up certain elements. So you _may _be looking at this problem back to front. It is quite rare for a Ca definiency unless a very acid medium and there is no Ca in the water. Too much ammonium will remove a lot of Ca as it is converted to nitrate so it needs to be replaced continuously - that's why Urea + limestone/dolomite seems to work so well - but as I said there is usually enough for most plants in municipal water. However I do regularly supply Ca as ground limestone especially for limestone plants. In the old days, most paphs were grown in fern fibre, mulch and moss and no other fertilizers were added so there was evidently enough Ca in the water. All my other non orchid plants do well with NKP and water without any Ca added. Modern orchid mixes tend to have much lower cation exchange capacity so the cations need constant replenishment.


I completely agree with you in that topic. And there is actually more to that but that is not what I commented. My comment was that of why those leaves are deformed that way. My take is that it is Ca defeciency. I dont want to argue what caused it because there are so many ways to cause it. But if I have to guess,,, my take is that this plant was growing in a very humid, not so warm environment. This condition will slow down respiration and limit the uptake of Ca. But this condition is also ripe for fast growth, specially for hybrids. So it will try to grow but does not have enough Ca to build the cells. The growth will be stunted, leaves will curl and thickens. Thats my take. 
And yes I am with you about lime. I hope some here will pay attention to what you just wrote. This is the form of source of Ca I meant on my previous post. But I know there are diehard Calcium nitrate believers here. So I'm not going there.


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## gego (Feb 7, 2020)

Stone said:


> Yes that was Rick - lovely bloke but his ideas about K and Ca were mostly nonsense.


No, it was Roth, his name is Xavier. One of his posts was about the results of the studies conducted. It is his comment about what is a better source of Ca. They are all there and they are in line with what you wrote above. I studied and researched about this finding. Experimented and play with it. And it all make sense.


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## Stone (Feb 8, 2020)

Ok. Yes Roth was very good with info. I have read all his postings and I learned a lot from him.


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## Jennifer Lynne (Feb 9, 2020)

Hardwood said:


> In my collection, those leaves would be showing a shortage of Calcium at the leaves. Calcium is needed every day by the plant. It does not move from the old leaves to the new leaves.
> Now you need to discover the reason that calcium is lacking at the leaves. It could be bad roots. It could be some other mineral is blocking the uptake of calcium. Perhaps you are using RO water with no calcium.
> In my greenhouse I was using water that had been softened with potassium chloride. The excess of potassium, filled up all the receptors for calcium and blocked the calcium from being passed up to the leaves.
> You can treat with a cal mag supplement or you can make your own with Plaster of Paris (calcium sulfate) and Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate). use one tsp. each per gallon.
> https://staugorchidsociety.org/ has a good page on mineral nutrition.


Thank you for the reply. I just received the plant in a shipment from a grower in Hawaii so I'm not sure what it was being fed. I will follow the recommendations


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