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Cinnamon: Myth-Busting Ideas about Orchids & Cinnamon
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Oct 3, 2024
The most common myth in the use of cinnamon for orchids: “Place cinnamon on your orchid roots. That helps them heal.” Right? NO—ABSOLUTELY WRONG. There is a lot of wrong advice about cinnamon on the internet that just makes me want to shiver—especially when it comes to applying cinnamon on orchids. It seems like if you tell a lie once, it’s still a lie, but if you publish it on the internet, it miraculously becomes true. Cinnamon has become another one of these tales (just like watering with ice cubes) that has caused misinformation and has had a hand in the death of many orchids. Cinnamon is not all bad for orchids. In fact, it has many positive properties. How does cinnamon help my orchid? Cinnamon for orchids should be used only as a way to dry up open wounds in leaves, preventing bacteria and infections to enter the newly exposed area. Never use cinnamon on orchid roots, since the interaction with the velamen will cause their death due to severe dehydration. Always use cinnamon in a controlled manner and in small doses. If you want the full explanation of this video in writing, go to https://orchideria.com/cinnamon-on-orchids/ On Orchideria.com, you can find more in-depth guides and all the access to our information, tutorials, guides, and much more... all for free! Happy Cultivating! ______________________
View Video Transcript
0:00
Cinnamon does have its place in orchid care. It's just not where you think it is
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Hi, I'm Amanda Matthews and thank you for watching this video at Orchidaria
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Just to not leave you in suspense, I will tell you where cinnamon is best used for orchid care
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and that's when you cut the leaf and you leave that open wound that just allows bacteria and infection to come in your orchid and take over that whole leaf
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And why does this happen? It's because the cinnamon acts as a desiccant and a desiccant will just dry up any part of the leaf or anything that it comes
0:37
in contact with. Causing severe dehydration and that dehydration forms a seal. There are two
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types of cinnamon. One is called Cassia and the other is Ceylon. Cassia can be found in most
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supermarkets and it's actually this one right here. You can use it but it does have a high level
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of curamins in it and that is both harmful to you and your orchid. So if you are using cinnamon to be
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cooking, which I assume you will, but if you can get the one that is Ceylon. Now Ceylon sometimes goes
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by the name as Mexican cinnamon and you can find it in both health stores or natural product stores
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but it's worth the weight. It doesn't have that much cimmerin in it. Now how does cinnamon act on an
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orchid leaf. The cinnamon is going to act as a desiccant. It's going to dry up everything in the
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environment around it, causing severe dehydration. This is why you can't take a teaspoon of
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cinnamon and swallow it whole. You will absolutely provoke that response where you want to throw up
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because it dries up your throat and the response in the body is to get rid of this as fast as it
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can. Remember when there was a challenge out there where you had to
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Eat a teaspoon of cinnamon and lots and lots of adolescents tried
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It's sad. But that's what happens. It's because the cinnamon reacts and dries up immediately
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Everything in its environment provoking severe dehydration. And any humidity in your throat is going to be immediately drawn to that cinnamon
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and you'll want to get rid of that. Well, on an orchid leaf, that's perfect because you have an open wound
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You cut the leaf where you either had bacterial rot or, something happened and you cut that leaf to prevent the infection from spreading
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But now you have an open wound, an immediate band-aid. It just, it seals off that entrance to the open wound
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Some people use candle wax to do the same thing because it also prevents
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it creates that barrier so that infection and bacteria cannot go in through that open wound Anywhere that the orchid has an exposed area that is a new door or a new portal for bacteria to come into your orchid So if you can close that off immediately
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and not water, that is the best thing for your orchid right after you cut a leaf off. Expose an open
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area or an open wound to your orchid. Theory, here's a myth that I'm going to bust right now. Cinnamon is not a
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bacteria site, even though a lot of articles and a lot of people are saying it is, it isn't
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What happens is you already know that cinnamon will come in contact with its environment and
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it's going to suck out immediately all the humidity from it, especially water
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So it comes in contact with the bacteria. Now, some bacteria have a stronger protection and they're not going to do anything
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The cinnamon just stays there and they just have a little party
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Now, other bacteria, their bodies are very soft, and so when that cinnamon gets in it, it immediately sucks out all the humidity from their little bodies
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I say this as if I like bacteria. No, suck it out
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Cinnamon doesn't kill bacteria, but it can. So that is why it's a myth
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It's not a bactericide, so don't use it as one, because some bacteria doesn't
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kill others it doesn't now what about putting cinnamon on top of spots for example bacteria brown
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spot you have spots on your orchid leaf and you dab a cotton swab in in a little bit of cinnamon and apply it on
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those spots now what's going to happen is that cinnamon is going to react both with the bacteria brown
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spot and the orchid leaf and it's going to suck humidity out of both of those
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So will it stop the spread of bacterial brown spot? Yes, it will. Will it hinder your orchid leaf in that spot? Yes, it will. But in some cases, it's actually good to do that because you cut the bacteria right from the start. You do not let it spread and that is preferable to letting it spread. So if you have very small spots on your orchid leaf, it's better that you do that than to cut off the whole leaf
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To kill bacteria brown spot, you can use fysan 20, which is an algicide, fungicide, bactericide, and viruside
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and hydrogen peroxide 3%, which is just hydrogen and oxygen, but with an extra oxygen
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If you want to use the cinnamon on a cotton swab I suggest adding a little bit of glue and mix that up with the cinnamon because then the cinnamon won run all over your orchid leaf because wherever it comes in contact what it going to do
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It's going to suck the humidity right out of that leaf. Another myth
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Cinnamon reduces inflammation in orchids. Well, apples and oranges here. Inflammation is a human response
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It's not a plant response. Plants don't get inflamed because they're not
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They do not have a immune system, if we put it that way
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Because immune system, what happens? When we get a bacteria or a virus in our bodies
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we immediately our glands will swell up, we'll feel, we'll probably get a fever
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we'll get a redness in the area. There's five of those, new nursing students and all this
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I've long forgotten. There are five signs of inflammation in our bodies
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Now, a plant does not get inflamed. Now what a plant does, you might see that there's little bubbles on top of the leaf like blisters
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It could be edema, which is improper watering where it meant too much time without water and all of a sudden got a lot of water
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And the leaf couldn't remove that water fast enough. So it just, it kind of puffed up
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That is probably what you're dealing with when you see an inflammation when it's puffy
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But orchids do not get inflamed and plants don't either. Now to the most important part of this video is where you cannot use cinnamon
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And please, please, please listen to this for everything sacred. When you cut an orchid root, do not apply cinnamon on the roots
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Because cinnamon will, as it naturally does, it sucks out all the humidity in the environment
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So it gets on that vellum. And the vellumon is a protective coating over the root is actually a little fine strand, looks
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like a fishing wire or a thread for sewing. And that cinnamon is going to come into contact with
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the vellum and it's going to suck out all the humidity from it and it's going to kill the entire
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velloman. So instead of just promoting that seal where bacteria cannot enter anymore
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the velloman is going to pull that cinnamon up through it and it's going to kill your orchid
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root all the way up back to the stem of the orchid. So when you apply cinnamon on roots, on orchid roots
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you are killing your root. You're not just preventing infection from spreading. You are actually
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killing your orchid root. You might think that you're providing extra care for your orchid
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but you actually sucking up the health of the velloman It might kill a few bacteria Yes but in that case why not use another product like hydrogen peroxide or fysan 20 or something else that will not damage those orchid roots
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The next myth that people have when it comes to cinnamon and orchids is it when it comes to black rot
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Now, black rot is different than bacterial brown spot. Bacterial brown spot, and this is a little culprit down here, that's his name, he will come probably because it was either too cold and water stayed on that leaf too long, and it provoked the breakdown of these plant tissue on the top of the leap
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So where that tissue was broken, that's an entry point for bacteria to come into the plant cell
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Black rot is different. Black rot takes over the pseudobulbs and the stems of the orchid, and it is pig
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pure black. It's kind of like a small child in kindergarten, got black paint and just
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squish that can out right all over your orchid. The entire pseudobul is going to be black
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The entire stem is going to be black. Cinnamon does not help black rot. It does not interact with
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black rot. Don't ask me why. It just doesn't. Black rot is so powerful. You're going to need
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actually a fungus side because the first step is bacteria and fungus come because fungus feed on
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bacteria it's like a pecking order cinnamon will treat bacteria but when it comes to fungus it does
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not do so well so you can use these treatments over here which are more appropriate to deal with that
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because black rot is a whole nother level a more severe level of a problem you can use cinnamon until your
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products come like you've found you have black rot and you order these products in the mail they're
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going to take what a week to get here so you can use cinnamon in that case to slow it down if you're
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going to have to upgrade that sometime to get rid of that black rot use that knowledge of cinnamon
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treat the leaves so it forms a seal so no bacteria can get in it if you've liked this video please
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hit the like button it just gives me a little bit of feedback to know what i'm doing
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right and what I'm doing wrong. I have so much to learn stuff here. I suggest two videos
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This one up here is about cleaning orchid leaves and the methods you can use to keep them
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clean because orchids do breathe through their leaves. And this one is about keeping your orchid
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healthy and 13 signs that you know you're providing the right care for your orchid
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And all happy cultivating and I hope to see you in the comments below
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