Elephant ear in trouble!

[BooseysMom]

I love this plant so much but it has developed brown scorch marks on its leaves. See photo. Does anyone know what it is? It's in a centrally heated room, not in the sun, and i spray it regularly.
Thanks

It’s an Alocasia.
They are bastards. They suck you in with their beauty then die. Slowly and painfully (for their owner).

Apparently, they need more light than we are led to believe, but not directly on them or they scorch.

Also, and I only learned this yesterday, they grow from corms - little bulbs, so you may be able to repot and start over. but I can’t reach into my bin to reach the one I threw out a couple of days ago.

Sorry, no real help, just bitter 😂

Oh no! You had the same thing happen to yours! Yes, that's exactly what they do, lure you in only to die off slowly. Awful! It was £8 from a garden centre. I planted it in a bigger pot and it did develop a new leaf but that looks like it's going the same way as the big ones. I won't buy another.
Thanks for posting.

I've had lots of Alocasias of different types and they have all died. Not this particular variety though. I went to Chester indoor market, the old indoor market. They had a wonderful indoor plant stall. There was an enormous Alocasia there. Leaves about 3 feet long and 2 feet wide. I asked them how to look after them and was told don't have direct light.

However, I looked at the pot and they seemed to be keeping it very dry. That is the opposite of what I had been doing with my Alocasias and Colocasias. You often think that these plants from the wet tropics will love being moist. So I kept mine dry and they seemed to do a lot better. Still died though.

What seems to happen is that the older leaves go manky. You end up with only a couple of leaves on it at a time. They seem to get some kind of insect or mite damage in my flat. I bought the red spider mite predators but they didn't stop them dying. There must be some way of not only keeping them alive but getting them to grow 6 feet tall! If other people can do it why can't we? They are striking plants.

These are my nemesis!
For context I have hundreds of houseplants from the mundane spider plant to exotics. They have babies all the time and I'm giving them away as have no space.
I cannot keep these alive. I so want to as they are beautiful. They limp on for a bit with max 3 leaves then die. I frequently shout at them "tell me how to love you!!" But they ignore me.

I think they survive a bit better being bottom watered infrequently and misted every single day? I'd love to know how to grow these, but never again.

I have had one for a few years and it has just given up on me. They are basically fine as long as you don't look at them or even think about moving them.

The only one that is worse in my experience is the coconut plant. They don't even grow a new leaf before they die. At least the Alocasia will grow a few new leaves in its short lifetime.

I thought I was on to a good thing with Alocasia zebrina. It's a lovely plant with stripey stems and it seemed to do well for a while then suddenly went downhill.

Thanks everyone ☺️

We also have some sort of mite but it only seems to go for the umbrella tree. I wiped all the little bugs off but they are making a come-back. They're too tiny to be aphids and they camouflage themselves in the veins of the leaves.
The alocasia has what looks like a leaf-miner spot on one leaf like you see on horse chestnut trees.

I am so perversely pleased I’m not the only one to fall foul of the alocasia curse. I lost another last week (no I didn’t learn my lesson!). I think a pp was right in they don’t like water but also need water. My recent one completely collapsed after I watered it 🤷‍♀️
maybe I’ll stick to cacti.

Yes I'm with you there! It certainly looks like the brown patches are going to spread and then the leaves die off. I won't bother with them again

Those could be red spider mite

Yes I think that must be what it is. The little blighters keep coming back! Thanks.

Just returning to this thread to say my Alocasia has 'fruits'! It may have brown scorch marks on the leaves but it's still producing these!

Thanks for the interesting photo. I didn't know they did that but I have since seen the same on an Alocasia in a house plant shop.

I left my Alocasia outside over winter because I was fed up with it. It shrivelled up and died but it has come back to life. In this photo you can see the rotted stem but also where it is producing leaves from below ground. It is a different species of Alocasia from yours.

Not to sound smug but my Alocasia is (touch wood) doing really well, it lives in a south facing bathroom just out of direct sunlight and I keep it damp not wet. My last one died a long and tragic death so now I daren't move the new one an inch!

If you get any more flowers on your Alocasia you might want to touch them to see if they are warm. Alocasias are aroids and apparently the flowers get warm.

A subset of plants have evolved the ability to produce heat, a fact that may come as a surprise to many reading this. The undisputed champions of botanical thermogenesis are the aroids (Araceae). Exactly why they do so is still the subject of scientific debate but the means by which heat is produced is absolutely fascinating.

Those are flowers. The fruits are red berries which cover the spike after flowering, if it’s been pollinated.

SuePine73 thanks for posting the photo. That's amazing it has come back to life! I didn't realise they were hardy.

Interesting they can produce heat. I have touched the bulbs on mine and they're cold so far.

Thanks Mere I am attaching a photo of it as it is currently. They haven't turned into flowers yet.

I think the way it works is that if you want them to live they don't, then when you're past caring they decide to come back to life!

From your photo it looks as if the flowers have been and gone. The dried up bits are the petals. The swelling is where the seeds are developing.

Really, that's interesting! Well that means it must have tried to flower and failed as there hasn't been any flowers produced.

I wish my orchid would come back to life. I'm trying to save it for a friend but it looks dead.

Apologies for resurrecting such an old thread but I wanted to say how grateful I am for your posts. I was going crazy trying to figure out why my alocasias are dying and I was thinking that I am a bad plant mother. I love them and I am so careful with them but they still die.
So far I have:

• Silver Dragon - died after a couple of years (I moved it closer to the light a while back (directly on the windowsill, maybe it’s that??). In truth it was unhappy before the move.
• elephant year (polly) - died after a couple of years. It used to live far away from a window, wasn’t happy at all. Moved it closer to the light, still died.
• dragon scale - I had it for just over 2 years now. It’s doing well but I moved it closer to a S-E window and it looks like it stopped growing. I am dreading what’s coming next.
• Jacklyn - I loooove the texture of this plant. It grew a lot since I bought it last year but still only has 2 leaves. Also on the windowsill of S-E window so we’ll see what happens
• batik - hmmm, this doesn’t look like a proper Alocasia. It’s the most successful, grows well and is happy.
• melo - still a baby song much alive on my windowsill

what seemed to have helped my Alocasia is buying ‘Alocasia soil’ for them. That stopped them from dying early on as they were threatening too. I let the soil dry pretty well before watering. They really don’t like that much water - they sweat it all out.

I saw alocasias in a plant shop a few years ago - they were big, glossy, perfect, not a brown edge. I have never been so in awe and that was the moment when I decided to have house plants. Some didn’t even look real, like their leaves were made of plastic (probably melo). I didn’t know at the time what a bitch they’d be to grow so I didn’t ask the owner how he managed to keep them all alive

I will be replacing silver dragon and elephant year. If anyone has any more tips on keeping these alive I would be eternally grateful

My babies 😬

Alocasias are closely related to Colocasias. I found out recently that Colocasias are happy in wet soil and they don't mind direct sunlight either. I am going to try and grow them, there are some varieties with enormous leaves.

There is much less variation in leaf shape with the Colocasias than with Alocasias. Have you seen Alocasia zebrina? It has medium sized leaves, more arrow shaped than heart shaped. The stems are interesting because they are banded with different shades.

Not sure if this is helpful to the people who over a year ago said there's were dead but alocasias and colocasias need a dormant period and when there is a temperature shift or a moisture humidity shift they drop all their leaves and shrivel into their corn/bulb to survive the cooler dryer months in their natural habitat but if you keep it it will grow again, you can treat it like a dahlia corn and overwinter in a tray of sand or newspaper then re-plant indoors in spring and it should re-grow. If they don't get it they tend to burn out too so it's best to let them follow their natural dormancy cycle each year.

@SuePine73 I have many varieties of colocasia in my garden. Pink China is hardy, and I’m currently experimenting with Esculenta, Jack’s giant and a couple more to see if they will survive winter with a bit of protection.

The only one that I’ve moved inside for the winter is black coral, as it was still tiny at the end of summer, and the leaf texture is very tender. It’s been thriving indoors and even more so under a grow light. Lots of new leaves, though they don’t get fully black indoors. It needs a lot of water.

I completely get that some people want the unusual forms like Pharaoh’s mask, but for me it’s the size of the leaves that matters most, along with hardiness. The standard form (esculenta) grown from a corm gives amazing big leaves. You can just pop the corm in a pot inside and wait forever (six-eight weeks) for it to sprout, harden off and plop in the border. I’m currently experimenting with the sandwich bag method for starting them faster, so far it’s going really well but I can’t vouch for it until I pot them in a couple weeks. All my corms have eyes and roots after just one week, and none have rotted.

The bonus is that the bulbs are super cheap - they are edible, my local Morrisons sells them by the kilo as veg.

Here’s one of mine from last year (in front of the palm). Not the best pic or the most abundant, but I love seeing the leaves get pregnant with and give birth to the next enormous, fully grown leaf. 🌱 And I just noticed that the black coral is also in the picture - it’s the tiny speck in a light pot at the front, after I dug it up in October. The difference in size is hilarious, they were planted just a month apart.

I can post an update on my sandwich bag corms, and results of my hardiness experiment, if anyone is interested.

GL to all the Alocasia lovers, though it sounds like an abusive relationship 😊

The reason why Alocasias so often die is because they find it difficult to cope with wet compost and they can't take direct sunlight. They will die at any time of the year.