Question
Hello Wayne King of Orchids

I got orchid fever about a year.  I progressively bought my first six orchids, Phalaenopsis, from a wonderful nursery.  And later bought four Phalaenopsis, nine Oncidiums, and a Paphiopedilum on the cheap at a yard sale.  Talk about going from zero to sixty, or in my case twenty.

One of my original orchids has flowers again and hopefully the others will follow suit.  It's a bit nerve-racking for that very first dormant period, not knowing if they'll ever bloom again.  

I moved my orchids outside in the shade this summer when evening temperatures were consistently in the high 50's.  After moving outside, one of the Phalaenopsis I purchased from the yard sale which was sitting on the outside edge of the group got a little too much direct sun and got sunburned on its top two leaves.  It's an older larger very beautiful plant.  All that sun & photosynthesis boosted its energy for a new axillary spike with flower buds to form from the flower spike, now a month later after the leaves were sunburned.  So it seems to be doing just fine, but the top two leaves are pretty ugly.  I usually will put one that's in bloom on my mantle but I don't know about this particular plant now.  haha       

I know the leaves store a lot of nutrients so its usually not good to cut them off.  So what do I do?  Will the two burnt leaves eventually fall off?  I don't want to cut the leaves, and by me being vain hurt the plants overall health.  

Please advise.

Thanks so much.
Diana from San Clemente, Ca

Answer
Diana, a belated welcome to the wonderful world of orchids.  You live in a wonderful place to grow orchids annd you got some real bargains.  Partly thr answer to your question depends upon how badly the leaves, and how much of the leaf, is burned.  If the leaves are a reddish color, moving the plant to a much shadier location might allow them to recover.  If they are burned so as to be nearly black, that is tissue destruction and that leaf will recover.  On large plants removing a few leaves should not be detrimental.  If the leaf is severely burned (black over much of its surface) it will die back, but, in the process, if it gets wet, especially late in the day, the already stressed leaf could develop a fungus infection which could spread to other parts of the plant.  If part of a leaf is burned but other parts not, you may just cut off the burned part.