This was a gift-plant from Ursula, received in May, 2015. @Ursula asked if I had any new growth. I don't know whether the plant is doing well and the brown tips on a lot of the leaves sort of worried me, but there is new growth. I think I counted 7 new leads. This was my first Coelia bella. It is growing in Cattleya media and is in a coir-lined, 12" wire basket, hanging under an oak branch. The plant gets direct sun from about 4:00 PM till dusk. Too much - too little?

Looks fine to me, Ken! Seven new growths means it is growing well. I always get a bit brown tips on older growths, if they bother me I just cut them off.

I did that before I took the pictures (cut off brown). Esthetics, you know.

Ursula, you may have already told me, but when does this plant normally bloom?

It blooms around Christmas for me and the blooms have a distinct Marzipan note!

Ken, some orchids are just prone to brown tips, especially if they don't like the water. I have one Coelogyne that looked terrible until I stopped watering it with the hose. With rain water, it's new growth is fine. On the other hand, many of the Zygos. get ugly leaves, no matter what I water them with.

Carol, only the old leaves get the brown tips. I think many of them already had some browning back in May. All the new leads have perfect leaves. No brown whatsoever. Our water is very good here and I simply can't use rainwater with so many plants. If the browning is due to the city water.........well, I'll just keep trimming them so they look nice.

ctcarol said:Ken, some orchids are just prone to brown tips, especially if they don't like the water. I have one Coelogyne that looked terrible until I stopped watering it with the hose. With rain water, it's new growth is fine. On the other hand, many of the Zygos. get ugly leaves, no matter what I water them with.

Carol,

I get the same thing on some of mine. It definitely must be the water. I have several plants that no matter what will get the brown spot and/or leaf tip browning. It doesn't matter how many times I rotate the fungal/bacterial sprays. Now I just keep the sprays in a rotation to try to be proactive as well as reactive. I have most of it at bay. There is just no way that I can make sure not to splash water here and there. Sometimes I wish I had an RO system, but I'm sure that I would figure out a way to have problems with that too. LOL.

Our water is pretty alkaline here, so I would like an RO system too, but I just don't have any place to put one. Usually my rain water is long gone by now, but we had a couple of off season rains this year so I'm good for a while. Not sure what comes off my roof is any better, but I'm always amazed how much water you can collect out of a 1/4" of rain.