Bird of Paradise Trouble

[geoken29]

Hi All

got some great advice here before for my plant - it's a month old in its new location and it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

see images - brown flecks on leaves, brown corners and crumpled corners.

it's in a warm sunny place and it's watered once a week thoroughly. sprayed with neem oil and drained before put in decorative pot.

what's going on here? is this normal? it's bloomed a new leaf but it just looks a bit sad compared to usual ones i see online :(

thank you all for your help - let me know what you think.

If it has been over a month in a new location and seems to not like it, I would find another spot to try. Do you have a photo of the whole plant?

You mention that you are watering once a week, are you checking the top couple of inches of soil has dried out before watering? Also are using fertiliser? It’s summer and growing season, and I am watering my BoP roughly every couple of weeks with BabyBio added.

Thanks for your msg - no fertiliser just yet but i've treated it with neem oil. it's in the only space i have for it between two windows - plenty of sunlight there. i water it once a week. do you think fertiliser is the ticket? you can see from pics how the leaves seem damaged

Why did you use need oil? Some plants can be sensitive to it, and that might be why the leaves are damaged.

it had white spots on the stems and some of the leaves and another forum recommended a watered down spray of neem oil

I wouldn't worry too much. They're as tough as old boots and about the only thing I know that will kill one is dry centrally-heated and shaded conditions which you don't have. The crumpling can be if aphids nibble at the very young leaf rolls. Mine currently have mealybug (eugh!) but they're coping. (I have five... oldest is now 23y and b. enormous)

thank you for your notes - great to know that they're so resilient!

would you recommend i do anything at all about these crumples and 'burnt' looking ends?

i see fertiliser was mentioned earlier in this thread. anything else spring to mind?

thank you again!

I find once a leaf's damaged it doesn't uncrumple, sorry. But it can still photosynthesize so won't hurt the plant. Several of mine have bent stems but keep on going. The worst I did to one was not water it for 3 or 4 months. I had hyperemesis and couldn't get out of bed long enough to water it (and the room was full of the shed contents after a gale blew a tree on it - so DH couldn't reach the plant anyway!) It lost half its leaves, and flowered like nothing on earth the following year.

Damaged leaves aren't like our skin - they don't mend themselves. Once they are damaged, that's it. They grow new leaves and eventually discard the old ones.

When it comes to watering, don't follow the calendar, follow the plant. They need different quantities of water depending on the time of year, how much they are growing and the air humidity, so don't just do it once a week - get into the habit of checking it more often, and water when it needs it.

One of the things I would mention is that they grow such large roots that they gradually push themselves out of their pots. At some point you have to get it out the pot onto a bin liner and repot it, filling in the hollow that the giant roots create at the bottom. Eventually even that will be too big to repot and you'll have to split it with two back to back forks or root prune so you can drop it down inside the pot again. It's amazing what you can get away with. I do love them!