By looking at the pictures attached, can anyone tell what's affecting my palm tree? I thought it was a matter of Manganese deficiency but after adding some (several months ago), it hasn't improved. Now I'm thinking that it could be a Potassium deficiency, but I don't want to over-fertilize. Any suggestions? Should I repot? Thanks!
Hi--hopefully a palm expert will chime in, but my reaction based on more general principles... Doesn't look like a deficiency, which usually results in some kind of leaf yellowing or spotting. The scorching of that leaf is recent, or older damage? The new leaves are coming in okay? or also showing similar symptoms? If not too difficult, remove root ball from the container and check the health of the exposed roots...look for brown, rotting, dead roots as opposed to nice white growing roottips. Kinda looks like fertilizer burn, or over/underwatering episode...but may be old news if new growth is coming in decently. I wouldn't add more fertilizers for awhile, as underfertilizing rarely hurts much, but overdoing it can burn and set back plants esp. if that is the original problem (fert. burn\salt buildup in media). Do you have a fertilizing schedule that you were following?
Thanks growest, your assessment coincides with the answer I got from Prof. Broschat at the Univ. of Florida. It seems that the problem is like some sort of water stress, likely caused either by drying out too much in the container or by too much fertilizer. Since I've been very careful watering whenever it's needed, I assume that the problem is too much fertilizer. The new leaves come out OK, but then start to show the same scorching. I will check the roots as you suggest. How do you deal with excess of fertilizer? Should I repot? Thanks!
Easiest solution should be to water the container very thoroughly until lots of water runs out of the drainage holes. This dissolves much of the excess fertilizer which is like salt and carries it away in this drainage water. If your tap water is very hard or highly chlorinated it would be nice to treat with filtered (NOT artificially softened however) water for this one time...as more chlorine and calcium and sodium in some tap water will reduce the effectiveness of this cleansing process (called "leaching"). Indeed, this kind of symptom might even be related to constantly watering with hard/salty/highly chlorinated water and not ensuring that some water always exits the drain holes...thereby building up salts/minerals in the root zone. I only mention this coz some of the tap water I sampled on vacations to California was quite hard and heavily treated with chlorine...I do realize there is good tapwater there as well, no criticism intended :-)