Ask-a-Dave's-Gardener: African Mask in need of help ASAP please., 0 by Fleur_du_Mal

Fleur_du_Mal wrote:
I first posted this last night but I don\'t see it anywhere on the board so I\'m posting it again because I really, really need help. It seems like my plant is going to die soon :(

Update: Since I first typed this last night, the second of the two larger leaves turned yellow and rotten so I cut it off. One of the 5 pictures I uploaded is from today since I cut the leaf off. It is the one that doesn\'t have a rug in the background under the pot.

Hi, group. I\'m going to start with a little bit about me since this is my very first post here.

I\'m not a beginner. I was born with two green thumbs and eight green fingers. My grandma taught me all she knew about plants and told me all secrets starting when I was just a little toddler, following her about--watching and listening, absorbing and learning raptly--as she watered, talked to, and applied those secrets, individually, to each of her plants. It was the beginning of a life-long love affair. When my grandma died in 2012, she was very sick and only able to manage one plant; a variegated house ivy. She left it to me. It is thriving.

I\'m the one people bring their flatlining plants to for rescue and I\'m the girl that picks the saddest most in-need of TLC plant out of the bunch when I\'m buying something new. The one that no one else will buy and that would most certainly die otherwise. Plants love me and I love them and one of my very few natural gifts lies with giving plants long, healthy, happy lives, flourishing, even if they couldn\'t be more ill-suited for my zone.

All of this is why I am so confused and frantic over the state of one of my newest plant acquisitions; the African Mask.

I have wanted an African Mask for a long time now but, for whatever reason, could never find one at any one of my local nurseries. Until a few days ago, that is. Orchard Hardware (OSH) is going out of business. I went to my closest local OSH and found one tiny African Mask shoved behind the rest of the indoor plants on a big messy shelf full of random plants. It looked like hell. One of it\'s leaves and stem was completely yellow and rotten. The other three leaves had (and have) yellow spots on them. At the time, I thought they must have been sun burn water spots but now I\'m not so sure.

When I got home I immediately transplanted it into a new glazed ceramic pot with Foxfarm Ocean Forest soil. And I got to thinking that, if this African Mask had been kept inside the store, how would it have sun burn water spots? And one of the leaves is starting to brown and shrivel all along the edges (this is since the pics I took).

I\'m afraid it might be sick and am very worried about it infecting my other plants. I have no experience with plant disease; only whitefly. I took several pictures of the African Mask and uploaded one from when I got it and o e from today. I\'m hoping that someone here can help me identify what\'s going on. The OSH employee told me it was just fine, ripped the rotten soggy yellow stem off and told me it would be just fine once I got it home and gave it a LOT of water like the one she has that lives in her yard pond. I don\'t take any of what she said seriously or, even, honestly.

I REALLY want this African Mask to make it so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!