So I wandered out last night with my flashlight when it finally stopped raining. Shining the light up under these two little Brassavolas, I noticed what looked like snow in between the slats on the basket. Looked at the next one, and its basket is pretty much clogged with this white moldy stuff.

The plants do not seem to be in any distress, and I have isolated them away from the rest of the orchids (although who knows how long that growth has been going on before I noticed it).

Has anyone seen this before? Should I worry about it? I plan to kill it with sunlight - have set the plants on their sides with the baskets facing the sun, - then just scrub it off the cedar. The white fuzziness has morphed into a sort of beige flat coating with a mushroom texture over the slats that can be peeled off the wood with my fingernail.

Should I go crazy with a Physan dunk or is this some benign fungal growth in the medium that will be gone in a week and leave beneficial bits behind.

I always want to think "this kind of thing must happen out in nature so may not be harmful" but . . well it may be, too. Orchids are killed off out in the wilds too, right?

It looks like a fungus growing on your wooden basket and not on your plant. Make a strong chlorine solution using pool water and your regular pool chlorine and spray it. Orchids will tolerate the chlorine better than the Physan.

Jim

Good idea, I will have to get some pool chlorine from my pool guy on Thursday to do that. Thanks Jim.

It does seem to be only on the baskets and not on the roots. It's not on any other baskets either.

It was probably in the wood when the basket was made.

Jim

Elaine, I have never seen anything remotely like that but would love to know how you end up treating it and what the results are (short-term and long-term). This could happen to me in the future and if it does, at least I will know what to do.

Please post follow-ups.

Sure thing, Ken. Right now I am just trying to get them dried out as we have had rain off and on for a couple of days.

I did find one more basket with the beginnings of the fungal joys as well, but so far have just cleaned it up with Q-tips and need to get out to buy more cinnamon! Battling a few black spots on other plants too.

I love to try an experiment, so I might try dunking one in a Physan solution, and spraying the other with a chlorine wash. See which works better.

I'm with you on the Physan question since I did spray it on the plants as well as the pavers and cage several times last summer, and had both good growth and lots of flowers since then. Chlorine is also a disinfectant, and I guess the difference may be that chlorine evaporates off, while maybe Physan stays around more. That could be a good or bad thing. So far my orchids are not dying off by any means.

hawkarica said:It looks like a fungus growing on your wooden basket and not on your plant. Make a strong chlorine solution using pool water and your regular pool chlorine and spray it. Orchids will tolerate the chlorine better than the Physan.

Jim

Why is that?

Anita

For some reason, orchids are very tolerant of chlorine. I found that out when a storm came through at night and toppled a Dendrobium into the pool where it sat upright on the bottom until I found it the next day. I pulled it out of the pool, washed it off and repotted it. It is still alive today. I also kill mold in the OC with a strong chlorine solution spray and they don't seem to mind a bit.

Jim

Here's my follow-up for you Ken. So far all I've done for these two baskets is hose them off with a sharp spray of tap (chlorinated) water, then let them dry in this position in the sun. There are just a few spots of the fungus left, up between the slats and it is turning black, dry and flaky. I'm hoping it will fall off and I won't have to treat them with the chemical big guns. Now, to keep them dry . . ..

Last night we had nearly 2in. of rain and I had them under the patio table which usually stays pretty dry, but they did get a little splash from the heavy rain, so here they are drying out again. Tonight if it rains again (and it's predicted to) I'm hanging them up under the overhang where they will stay dry.

Sunlight is a pretty miraculous sanitizer all by itself.

Thanks for the follow-up, Elaine.

Just noticed that I forgot to put in the picture in my previous post, so I've added it.

Looking good!

Two days of heavy rains have everything soaked. You can smell the mold in the air. It is impossible to walk around the backyard without getting my ankles wet. The rainy season is going out with a bang.

Jim

Elaine, where exactly is the picture?

I stuck it into my post from yesterday.