I bought this plant at a local nursery(Kelowna, BC) and have no idea what it is?? Can anywone ID this plant? Also, it survived nicely on my south facing condo balcony during th summer(HOT) but as you can see its not doing so well indoors.....how can I revive this plant to keep it alive during the long dark winter? I have been considering grow lights?? Please help.
Looks like a Dracaena marginata. I've never had one so I'm not sure about their growing conditions indoors.
I have three of these so I think I may be able to help you. First the brown leaves on the bottom of the plant need to be removed. They should come off with a little pull. If you leave them on, the plant is using energy to try and keep those leaves and it could be using that energy on putting out new healthier leaves. Ususally with a dracaena marginata, they do not like full sun. It burns them. I have mine in my dining room which receives bright indirect light and they are loving it. They are tropicals so they tend to like warmer temps. I had to turn the heat on recently because I live in zone 5 and all my plants were starting to get cold. I have found through my research on this plant that brown leaves near the bottom of the plant usually mean not enough water and yellow or brown edges on the leaf tips mean too much water. You just need to find that happy medium. Also your plant may be rootbound. It looks really big compared to the pot you have it in. Repot it in a bigger pot, give it some water, and lastly some time to adjust. Just be sure not to water too much. They don't like being too dry or too wet. I wait until its soil dries out to about an inch below the surface and then I water again. Hope this helps...
normal growth pattern for draceana marginata is that the lower leaves will brown up and die off as new growth appears at the top - so those are not to be worried about. browning leaves elsewhere do indicate a problem. my neighbor *waves at homebody* is correct that it does seem to be in too small a pot. it may or may not be rootbound. you can look at the bottom to see if roots are coming out the drain holes or unpot it and look at the rootball - if you see roots going around in circles and they hold the shape of the pot, then you need to go with a larger container. the more likely reason for the browning leaves is that it's not getting enough water. they should be watered throroughly and then allowed to dry out a bit - about 1 1/2 inches down - and then watered again. another reason is that you may have left it outside too long before bringing it in and it might have a bit of frost damage - it should recover just fine once it gets completely situated to being in the differing conditions. whenever you move plants in/out of the house, you should do so when the ambient temps are the same inside and out. this would be during the timeframe that you do not have heat or a/c on. also, if the lighting is going to be extremely different (as in brighter outside than in), then you need to ease the plant into the new conditions so that it doesn't go into shock. generally, you want to keep the natural lighting conditions as close to the same indoors and out. so, for this plant, that would be a very bright area inside and a bright, yet shaded, spot outside - maybe a little morning sun with the area shaded in the hot afternoon. all window glass does a fair amount of filtering out the rays of the sun, so, to take a plant (even if it normally sits in front of a window) and putting it outside in front of the same window would cause it to burn because, outside, the rays of the sun are much stronger. any windows that have specific treatments on them to reduce sun ray damage will give an even higher contrast between the light a plant receives through it versus putting the plant outside.
Thanks for the responses.....there is browning of leaves other than those just at the bottom. I moved the plant inside in early October so the temp change was not drastic and the plant is infront of a south facing window therefore it gets as much light as there is in a day. When I have the plant outside during the hot and very dry summer months I was watering as much as 4 Litres per day and it was thriving? Should I keep watering as much? Since its been moved inside I have trimmed at least 20 leaves off of the bottom....it keeps dying! Not sure what do do except trim the dead leaves and watch more appear.