Dear houseplant community,
Like the beginning of any good letter, I should probably have written you sooner.
Anyway, a friend of mine had this beautiful plant that she neglected for months, completely drying it out. At the end there were just a few leaves hanging half a meter from the plant itself, completely dried out.
I cut off a piece, gave it roots, potted it, and it went wild! Explosive growth, every new leaf bigger than the last. It was unlike anything I've ever seen.
A few months later, it had had enough. Leaves started curling up and withering. Growth halted. I thought maybe I had forgotten to give it water, but that wasn't it. Moving it to a sunnier spot didn't help either. Now it's almost completely dead, and I miss what we once had.
So, a couple of questions:
- Does anyone have any idea what went wrong? Did I water it too much? Too little?
- What can I do? Can it be saved? Does it need plant nutrition? A bigger pot? I'm afraid of doing anything, as it seems so fragile one bad move would surely be the end of it.
Thank you so much in advance!
Yours truly, Aa
That’s a calathea. Tropical rainforest plants that grow well below the shade of the canopy. It needs HUMIDITY, warm temps, indirect dappled light, and never fully dry soil (nor saturated). Notoriously difficult as a houseplant.
Isn't it a maranta, not calathea? Or are they related maybe? I've had some calathea, very pretty at first but then all drama and they die.. I've had much more success with the maranta, fairly resilient imo.
Not sure, actually. But they grow in the same conditions.
It does look like a maranta! And the fact that it stayed alive at my friend's place despite a lot of neglect would indicate that it shoudn't be a famously tricky plant. That might give me some more hope, but also makes it even worse that I'm managing to kill it.
I'll follow the advise given for the calathea then, if they want roughly the same thing. Thank you so much! :)
One thing I forgot to add to my list of requirements: you need to use filtered day-old water. Tap water must be off-gassed for like 24 h before watering this plant. I’d opt for fluoride-free water. Good luck.