Beginner Gardening: Very Important African Violets in Big Trouble, 1 by tapla

tapla wrote:
I think your plant is on its way down for the count. Since it appears that the underlying cause is going to remain unidentified, and if there's any chance of saving the plant it will require your intervention, the best thing is to turn from trying to identify and correct A problem, to trying to make sure you have appropriate cultural conditions. Reading the sticky at the top of this forum would be a step in the right direction.

If you're serious about saving the plant, you might depot, bare-root, prune the roots back to sound tissue, swish the roots in a 10% mix of water & unscented bleach or water & 3% H202 (hydrogen peroxide), and plant the plant in chopped sphagnum moss (not peat - see below), or a 50/50 mixture of chopped sphagnum moss and screened/rinsed perlite. Keep the mix damp, not wet. If you have an old colander or kitchen strainer you can use for a container, use that - call it your intensive care facility.

One of, or the the primary factor that determines if a cutting will strike or not is the amount of reserve energy it has. Obviously, your plant is at the very end of it's energy reserves, so it's extremely unlikely a cutting will yield another plant. Also, since your plant has little in the way of photosynthesizing machinery, which is where the plant's food comes from, removing even 1 leaf will significantly reduce the plant's ability to make food. In this case, it's probably better to put your eggs in one basket. My choice, since I think there is little hope of getting cuttings to work, would be to try to save the plant and to leave all the current foliage intact if it has any green showing.

Al