Update! Read All About It.

You may recall that on July 29 pictures were posted with a request for your opinion as to what might be the cause of the lost centers. Comments ranged from fertilizer burn to heat or potting stress to mites. I knew it was not mites, but was pretty open to potting or heat stress since it was very hot this summer and all the plants had recently been repotted.

So here’s what I did. The center of each plant was sprayed with fungicide and gently dabbed dry with a cotton swab. As the new center leaves either completely or partially turned soft and brown, they were totally or partially removed, being very careful not to do any excessive damage to the tiniest new leaves. I removed some of the potting medium from the top so it was slightly below the bottom leaf stems. I did not change my lighting or fertilizer schedule nor did I repot the plants.

Here are the original pictures and ones of the plants two months later.

Yukako looks great. The new leaves have filled in nicely and it has continued to bloom.

The leaves on Lyon’s Fortune Teller are filling in, but it has some major groom secessions coming up in the future.

Ma’s Winter Moon did not recover. However, it did produce some good suckers. Here is one recently potted up to a 2-1/2” pot.

Sora Munchie obviously did not recover either. But, as you can see, it has at least three good strong suckers which will be potted soon.

So now my question is - what would you have done with these plants? Would you have tossed them figuring they had some horrible disease or pest? Would you have worked with them? Since I had already paid once for the two chimeras and didn’t want to order just one plant to get Ma’s Winter Moon again, I opted to work with them. ...... Many thanks to Barb W. for the wonderful pictures and article!!!

What's Your Opinion???

Here's a challenge for everyone! Look at the photos and think about what's going on with these plants. Contact the blog with your ideas. ALL IDEAS ARE HELPFUL .... to start conversations, generate solutions to this and other problems, and to help others that might be having the same things happen to their plants. Simply reply to the blog. For HELP commenting, click on link.

What causes the center leaves of a recently potted plant to die off? Forget pests, this has nothing to do with them. I can repot 30 plants and after a couple weeks will notice that on two or three the center leaves have turned brown and died off. Now keep in mind that the leaves do start to grow then turn mushy brown from the tip to the stem.

More often than not the entire center will be lost. The plant itself is still healthy, but with no center, it will form multiple crowns or produce suckers. Okay, you still have a plant with which to start over from leaves or suckers. But it would have been much nicer to have the original plant that is already a good size in the first place.

I think Yukako has a chance of making it. Ma’s Winter Moon is very iffy. Sora's Munchie and Lyon’s Fortune Teller look very pathetic. It can be with any color foliage, variegated or not. Plus the plant keeps right on blooming if it has any possibility of producing leaves before the center dries up completely. By the way, there was no evidence of “orange crud” on the plant.

So, does this have to do with transplant shock? Is it because it was planted too deep? What?

Many thanks to Barb W. for the article and the great shots of the plants! Remember, send in comments!

So, What Happened to Fe Fi?

Our meetings generally start by checking out the host’s plant room. It’s a lot of fun, but the host is usually answering questions from three or four different directions. One member noticed the brown markings on a couple of my mini/semis and asked what I thought caused that. However, we never really had the chance to discuss it.

Here are some pictures. What are your thoughts? The first picture (which isn’t very clear) points out the brown marks on a leaf.

The second picture points the marks on three separate leaves. Note that they are all on the same row. The marks are not on higher or lower rows.

Notice also in the third picture that the older leaves have a much wider span and from the marked leaves on, the plant seems smaller.

Upon checking, I see this same condition on three of my 50 mini/semis. I attribute it to repotting stress. These plants are repotted every three months, the last time being November. That looks appropriate for the amount of growth. Often, when repotting in the summer when it is very hot, this condition will show up on many of the mini/semis. Occasionally, it will even appear on standards, but not too often. How can this be avoided? I don’t have a clue. Possibly the plant was treated too roughly when being transplanted.

Many thanks to Barb W. for the excellent article and photos!