Hi all, What a lovely place this is - thank you for existing to help non-green-thumbers like myself! I have a tiny apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota. There is one beautiful spot for a plant, though. I've always wanted a Norfolk Island Pine, so I got a small one (maybe 1 foot tall). I have clearly killed it...I'm quite good at that, unfortunately. :( So I thought I'd try to find out what I did wrong before I decide whether to try another Norfolk Island, or go for something else. The plant is next to an East-facing window, so it gets direct sun in the AM and then nothing the rest of the day. The only other window in the place is north-facing, so no direct light there at all. The poor little guy is basically dead on one side, and not on the other. There hasn't been much browning at all...but all the branches on one side are just hard, brittle, and a more greyish-green than the live side. If you touch them, they'll break. It's been sitting half-dead like this for months with no change - one side is fine, the other is not. So...are these just not the right light conditions, and I should try a different plant? Or, as is VERY likely, do I just need to give it more love - carefully make sure to mist it enough, and water appropriately? And if these aren't good conditions for it, any thoughts as to what might grow well here? I prefer "unique" plants that aren't super common. Thanks so much! Beth
What you are describing is not a disease process. Deficiency or infection would show up with yellowing or browning or leaf drop, not with once green, now gray and brittle. That almost always is a mechanical injury. I would expect that you'll find the bark has been severed or something dropped and crushed or damaged that side so those branches died all at once. Can you post a photo in good lighting? Seeing the trunk, and a closeup of the branches might help. For such a small tree, I would doubt the injury is something done below the soil line. It's too young and likely too inexpensive for the kind of girdling injury someone is showing in the maple forum right now. If it is the sort of injury I suspect, the rest of your plant may very well grow, and you could eventually see new growth on the good side and above the dead stuff, branching out and over the dead. It will probably not recover and sprout from that gray area. Could if the cambium is not completely severed, though. A Norfolk Island pine really does better outside, but not in your climate. How about a big Alocasia spp.? Striking leaf shape.
Hi, You haven't mentioned which side of the Pine is looking bad. Is it the side that receives less light? Do you have a heat source beneath the window? Radiators will do a lot of damage to plants located close to or above. I've lost a few in the past. Glad to see you are mist spraying it. Almost essential with Norfolk Island Pines! As mentioned above, stem damage could be the culprit too. Some branch drop/browning is normal with Araucaria at an early age but only on one side of the tree is not.
Thank you both so much!! There's no heat particularly near the plant. I did notice some trunk injury to it the other day, so that may very well be the issue. I'm going to try a new plant, mist it well and see if I can make a go of it. Thanks again for your help!
