I bought this plant canela standard (cinnamomum canela) about 2-3 weeks ago and first watered it and gave plant food.Leaves starded to curl up with some brown spots on it. DID I do something wrong to my plant? It looks like it's going to die soon. I watered it with tap water 2 times it is sitting by the window about 100 inches away. Is it too much light?
PLease help
I couldn't find much information on this plant and have never grown it myself. Looks like it would be a wonderful one to have! My first thought is maybe your problem is from fertilizer ... maybe too much, but I'm really not sure. And, then I thought maybe sun damage coming through the window glass.
I googled around and found this information for canela plant but here are no photo's so I don't know if this is the same exact plant you have:
http://en.allexperts.com/q/House-Plants-721/Canela-Plant.htm
I copied and pasted the part from link where someone asked about their canela plant. This was from a year ago but maybe it will help.
Question
I have a canela plant that was doing well up until about 1 1/2 months ago, it is in a room that gets indirect light but is not overly bright. It is approximately 4 feet tall in a 16" diameter pot. I water it often so that it does not dry out and suddently the leaves are all drying and turning brown. One entire stem on the plant has died (should I prune this off). the leaves that are still green are very healthy looking. Please help.
Answer
The botanical name for your Canela is Cinnamomum kotoense. It can survive in low to medium light, but only if the soil is allowed to get very dry between waterings. In bright light it will do better and will use more water.
You have yours in reduced light and are probably keeping the soil too moist. If you repotted it to a larger pot, then that has also contributed to keeping the soil too moist. The moist soil has caused the roots to rot and the stems to die. Depending on how badly the roots have rotted, it may or may not recover.
Any dead leaves and stems should be removed as they will not recover.
Move it to a sunny location and allow the top quarter of the soil to dry out in between waterings. Then hope for the best.
Sorry I don't have better news for you.
Please let me know if any of this is unclear or if you have any additional questions. If you would like to e-mail me some photos, I may be able to provide some additional insights.
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I'll start by saying that I'm not familiar with these plants or what the proper conditions are for them. What I can say is that there don't seem to be very many brown spots on your leaves, so in my mind it's unlikely that's your core problem. In addition to what Lin said, anytime a plant is suffering I would always check for potential watering issues, improper watering is one of the leading causes of houseplant death! Stick your finger down into the soil and see how it feels--if it's bone dry then you may not be not watering enough, if it's sopping wet then you're watering it too much and ought to repot into some dry potting mix and cut back on your watering frequency. Also check your pot size--if the pot is way too big for the plant that can make it easier to overwater, or if the pot is too small and the plant has become rootbound then it can become hard to get the plant the right amount of water so you effectively end up underwatering it. In either case it would be best to get the plant into an appropriate size pot.
Hi, I have one for three years now. It may be overwatering, since they like it quite dry, or check for pests. Mine gets scales from time to time, but they do not cause leaves to curl.
thank you all very much,answers are very helpful!!!!here is another picture that I took yesterday. I will wait with the watering for a couple more days and water it with bottled water maybe it will come alive again!!! I put this foil around the pot because I have 2 cats and they like to spray in soil of my flowers!
THANK YOU
This message was edited Apr 12, 2008 7:10 PM
Is that a plastic bag wrapped around the bottom of the pot? If it is, then the first thing I would do is get rid of that, it's possible when you water the plant that the bag isn't allowing water to drain away very well and the roots are sitting in water more than they ought to. If you need to keep water off your floor, get a saucer to put under it when you water it, but make sure once the water drains through that you go and empty the saucer so it doesn't sit in water. Also does the pot have a drainage hole in the bottom of it?
Yes that's a plastic foil but it's only wraped on top of my soil because of the cats. The bottom of the pot has holes and it has a saucer but I remember I watered it last time and kept the water in the saucer for 2 days ,maybe that's why??Thank you for your advice
That could be the problem, most plants don't like to sit in water like that, it's best to drain the water out right away.
I am thrilled that you inquired about this plant. I have had one for over a year now and couldn't figure out what it was. My most knowledgeable plant friends were baffled too. Yours looks way better than mine. I only paid $5 for a 5 foot "tree" but it was in sad shape when I bought it. I carefully washed each leaf, top and bottom, because it had spider mite (the leaves were curled) and I cut it back by a third. It took forever, but new leaves did begin to form. I thought it looked fabulous (especially compared to when I brought it home), but yours is so much fuller. I'm sure your plan to allow the soil to dry a bit will bring it back around. I'm sure some time outside in a fairly shady location when the weather warms up will do it a world of good too. Good luck and THANKS for the ID.
Chris
I've never grown one of these, either, but have been trying to locate one and have been researching a bit.
I notice you're from Worth, IL, so my question is....what was the weather like when you brought the plant home, and if it was cold, was the foliage wrapped?
If not, and the temps were cold, your foliage could be dying from cold damage.
If that's the case, treating it the same way as growgirl did with hers (remove dead foliage and/or cut back) should result in new growth.
Good luck!
Yes,when I bought it it was cold outside but it took me 2-3minutes to get it from my car to the home the plant didn't have any wrapping around. But after 2-3 weeks of purchasing the leaves started to curl. I stopped giving the fertilizer and will water when the top soil is dry.
Thank you
My opinion is that cold damage is the problem, since you just purchased it a few weeks ago.
Even a few minutes of below freezing could cause cell damage to the tender foliage of a tropical plant that never experiences such temperatures in it's native habitat.
It usually does take a couple/few weeks for cold damage to show.
This happened to me a long time ago with a beautiful philodendron I bought.
