I'm sad, and I don't know what happened. :-(

The tropical hibiscus that I carried so carefully home on the plane last February, planted outside in the spring, bloomed the latter half of summer, and bloomed with 16 blooms at a time in the house this winter has met with disaster of some sort. It bloomed three times again, just last week, and then the whole thing slowly started wilting. The whole thing is wilted now, even the nice new, green, large leaved new growth that looked healthier than I'd ever seen it. The leaves are not falling off, just every single one of them is wilted and drooped. I'm sure it will lose every last one of them. I don't know if the plant itself will die, but I think it surely will; it's gone downhill so fast.

I didn't do a thing differently. It's in a southern window in the family room and has been happy there for three months.

Win some, lose some, I guess. :-( I just wish I knew what happened.

Kylee

The picture is from October, when it began blooming its 16 blooms.

Very nice variety. is the soil wet to the touch??? sounds like too wet and cool at the same time. that will cause hibiscus to wilt down like this.

Do you have a picture of it now with the wilted leaves? Without seeing a picture, it sounds like too much water, but if you check the soil and it's not wet then a picture would really help figure out what else it might be.

Sounds like too much water here, too, but having been planted in the ground..........any chance it picked up some sort of hitchhiker that finished off it's root system?

I actually repotted it a couple of days ago, as a last ditch effort to save it, because it's always been in the original pot since I got it. I put it outside over the summer, sinking the clay pot down into the ground, and it did great. When I repotted it, the root system looked very healthy and extensive. I inspected the roots and could see nothing out of the ordinary, and I looked the soil over really well, too, and saw nothing.

Too wet...that's a possibility I supposed, but it's always soaked up the water like crazy since I brought it inside. It sits fairly close (15 inches) to our baseboard heater in that room, so that probably is why it craves the water. However, I may have given it too much too many times in a row.

Here's a picture. Is there still hope for it, do you think?

I've posted this before. Hibbies are confusing to me because, being a tropical, I want to water them, but I've learned, after too many losses, to be skimpy w/ water. Yours looks a little too wet. I think it can recover, though. Crossing my fingers for you.

I don't have baseboard heaters so I don't know how they work exactly--does it blow hot air out? If it's blowing hot air across the leaves that could make it look the way it does too.

No, it doesn't blow hot air. It just radiates it upward. You can feel a little bit of heat from it right in front of it, but it's not excessive. And this is where it's been the entire time and it was doing fine up until about two weeks ago.

It could be too much heat/dryness in the air--I know you had a milder than usual winter up until recently, so now that your weather is colder, I bet the heater is running more than it was earlier, which means more heat radiating toward the plant, and that could explain why you're having problems now but didn't before. I would try moving it farther away from the heater and see if things improve, or if it needs to be in that place in the room, find a stand or something to put it on so it's a little farther removed from the heat source.. It still could be a watering issue, it's hard to tell for sure from the picture but to me the leaves look a little more like the heat/dryness problem than overwatering. But it's very hard to tell for sure from a picture, so I could be totally wrong.

keep it on the dry side and mist the leaves several times a day and see if it recovers.I hope it makes it, you can even feed it thru the leaves by adding a little fertilizer to the mist bottle.Do NOT feed thru the roots yet though until they recover. Keep the plant in lower light till it perks up too.Not dark just NO sun.

Will do. Like I said, the leaves aren't falling off and even when I tug on them, they are firmly attached. Some have gotten crispy by now, yet still refuse to leave the plant! Thank you so much for the advice and I will keep you informed as to what happens here.

Kylee,

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, she sure is a beauty!

Do you happen to know her name?

mg

I've been told it's probably...oh geez, I can't remember now. Let me check. I think I was told it is probably Florida something or other.

I paid just two dollars for it, so if it dies, I'm not out much, but I don't want it to die! I've enjoyed it so much! I should have left it down in the basement under the lights, I guess. That's where it was when I first brought it in, but after a week or so, I brought it upstairs because I noticed all the new flower buds and I wanted to enjoy the show! But that was three months ago.

'Seminole Pink'

Please tell me you did not just spend 45 mins looking for that!

But I sure will put her on my lust list.

mg

No, it only took me 44.

LOLOLOL. Actually, with gmail, you can do a search of your mail quite easily, and it didn't take me long at all to find it. I just kept getting interrupted/distracted and it took me that long to get back here and post it!

Kylee;,,

After reading through the thread and all the replies I thought I'd make one of my own.... If the leaves dried out, my best guess at this point would be to close to the radiating heat sorce.... I think ecrane3 hit it right on....... Leaves are dry but look to be healthy.....Move it away from that heat and follow Eclipses advice.... I think it should recover fine.....

Best of luck with it...

Dave

This message was edited Jan 30, 2007 6:13 PM

Thanks for the encouragement! And the leaves are now totally crispy, but still hanging on pretty tightly! LOL. I'm misting it daily and it's getting light from a south window, but no direct sun. Oh, I hope, hope, hope, that it lives. You know, it probably will, because it only cost $2.00. If I'd paid $20, it would die for sure. LOL.

How's she doing today Kylee?

mg

All the leaves are now gone, and I'm still misting daily. I'm hopeful that it will show some signs of life here one of these days.

pardon the intrusion, but after reading this thread, i'd like to make a comment. my hibiscus are blooming outside in huge pots even though we have been in the 30's at night on and off for about a month. they can even take a light frost. we had one last week. in the winter in central (and even south) florida, they will wilt down like that after sudden weather changes. they don't require much water when the weather is cold. i think your house is too hot for it, especially by a heater. if i were you i would stop misting the stems, move it to the sunniest and coldest room in the house and leave it alone. resist the urge to water it until it is thoroughly dry, then give it a good soaking, let it drain out and only put the saucer back when it stops dripping out the bottom. hibiscus are tougher than you think.

Oh, I've moved it away from the heater. It is in bright light, but not direct sunlight. I've not watered it since I first posted in here, and the soil is just barely damp. Maybe I'll move it upstairs to one of the colder bedrooms, though.

scratch a small spot on a stem to see if its still apple green color under the bark, if so there is still hope if it is tan or a deep green(very dark) it is probably too late.

Kyle

APPLE GREEN!!!!!

:-))))))

yeah!

Oh too sad. I hope it grows again for you. It was so pretty! I know how you feel, I have a few too that are looking so bad!

I can't add anything to the diagnosis here, but I can say that hope is not lost. The first year I brought hibiscus in the house for winter they dropped every leaf they had. There was NOTHING left but sticks. I just left them to sit, and watered only when the soil seemed dry, and by spring they had totally leafed out again and even bloomed once in the house. Good luck!

So what's going on now?

I lost it. :-(

I'm so sorry....

I am so sorry. I lost 4 out of 5 tropical hibiscus I got last year and several reg hibiscus. It truely is a heartbreaker. Again I am sorry.