Moth Orchid: root rot from standing water — what does it look like?

Roots brown, flat and stringy instead of plump and silvery-green. Leaves limp and leathery despite wet conditions. Healthy orchid roots are firm and turn bright green when wet. Brown and hollow means gone. Trim to living tissue and repot into bark.

Moth Orchid: crown rot — what does it look like?

Blackening at the very center where new leaves emerge, often after water sat in the crown overnight. Usually fatal once the growing point is black. Water at the roots, never into the crown.

Moth Orchid: assumed dead after flowering — what does it look like?

Flowers dropped, flower spike browned, leaves still firm and green. This plant is completely healthy. Cut the spent spike, keep it in bright indirect light, and it will spike again.

Field Guide/Moth Orchid

What went wrong

Moth Orchid

Phalaenopsis

Thrown away alive, in enormous numbers, every year.

More Phalaenopsis are thrown out healthy than die. The flowers finish after two or three months, the plant sits there as leaves and roots, and its owner concludes it is spent. It is not — it is simply between flowerings, and will rebloom for years given light and a rest.

Of the ones that genuinely die, nearly all drowned. Supermarket orchids are sold in a plastic sleeve inside a decorative pot with no drainage, and watering into that arrangement leaves the roots standing in water permanently.

Usually one of these

3 Likely Causes

Ranked by how often it is actually this.

01
Root rot from standing water
The main killer
What you saw
Roots brown, flat and stringy instead of plump and silvery-green. Leaves limp and leathery despite wet conditions.
What it means
Healthy orchid roots are firm and turn bright green when wet. Brown and hollow means gone. Trim to living tissue and repot into bark.
02
Crown rot
Common and fast
What you saw
Blackening at the very center where new leaves emerge, often after water sat in the crown overnight.
What it means
Usually fatal once the growing point is black. Water at the roots, never into the crown.
03
Assumed dead after flowering
Extremely common — and not a death at all
What you saw
Flowers dropped, flower spike browned, leaves still firm and green.
What it means
This plant is completely healthy. Cut the spent spike, keep it in bright indirect light, and it will spike again.

The question you actually have

Dead or dormant?

Ignore the flowers entirely — they are irrelevant to whether it is alive. Look at the leaves and roots. Firm leaves and any plump silvery-green root means a living plant that simply is not in bloom. Only a mushy crown with no firm roots is actually dead.

If it did not make it