A glossy, heart-shaped anthurium with the occasional red flower spike can start yellowing in an odd pattern: the veins stay distinctly green while everything between them fades to yellow, almost like a stained glass window. Root rot is the first suspicion, but pulling the plant out shows roots that are completely fine. That pattern (interveinal … Read more
A rex begonia is easy to buy for the leaf pattern alone, that swirl of silver and deep maroon that doesn’t look real in photos. A faint white dusting on a few leaves, right before they start yellowing and dropping, is easy to mistake for a pest, and it’s tempting to spend a weekend checking … Read more
The segments of a Christmas cactus turning a deep reddish-purple right as the weather cools in fall can look alarming: it is easy to assume something is wrong, maybe the plant is too cold, maybe it is some kind of nutrient problem. Moving it to a warmer spot and fussing over it for a couple … Read more
Dry brown tips on nearly every leaf send most people through the usual list: check the soil moisture, move the plant away from the heating vent, even up the humidity with a pebble tray. When none of that helps, the tap water is the next thing to look at. Dracaenas are among the more fluoride-sensitive … Read more
A hoya cutting from a plant swap can leave you waiting for weeks for the leaves to “flatten out” the way healthy leaves are supposed to. Some varieties just grow slightly cupped and a little rippled at the edges, and it’s easy to spend too long assuming something is wrong before looking up the specific … Read more
A cluster of small brown spots spreading across a few leaves of a philodendron, each one ringed with a faint yellow halo, is easy to dismiss at first as cosmetic damage from moving the plant around. When it spreads to nearby leaves within a week or so, it becomes clear this isn’t random damage, it’s … Read more
Brushing past an echeveria while dusting a shelf and watching three or four leaves just drop right off, clean and easy, barely any contact at all, can feel like damage. It usually isn’t: a lot of succulents are actually built to lose leaves this easily on purpose, and it’s how many of them naturally propagate … Read more
Moving a weeping fig about four feet across the living room — same amount of light as far as anyone can tell, just a different spot — can still lead to it dropping what feels like half its leaves onto the floor within a couple of weeks, even when nothing else about its care has … Read more
Had a pothos that had been in the same hanging pot for close to two years, growing like mad the whole time, and started noticing the newer leaves coming in slightly curled rather than the usual flat heart shape. Watered it, checked the light, nothing seemed off. Turned out the actual issue was underneath, the … Read more
Watering a desert cactus on the same schedule used for tropical plants — weekly, without thinking about how different its actual water needs are — is a common mistake. The base starts going yellow, then a slightly sickly pale green, over a few weeks, and it is easy to keep assuming the plant just needs … Read more