Photos going from current day to 2 days ago.
Picked up this big money tree from homedepot on Monday.
It looked great in the store, was just watered and smelled great.
Day two leaves changed to an olive colour overnight. Girlfriend says it has a “metallic” sort of smell.
Roots are still firm and hard, not seeing any root rot.
Waters still moist
Day three, it got a fair amount of direct light this morning as I thought maybe it was lacking?
Never seen this before on a money tree, and really don’t want to lose this one.
My thought was yesterday that it was stressed from moving. Temps were probably -10° when we got it, but it wasn’t exposed long to the chill.
Any advice thank you
by Jbremer155
9 Comments
That looks like cold damage.
Yes, it was exposed enough to do this damage 😢
-10??? 🥶
I’m in Canada too, -10c is too cold to be bringing plants home, sorry. That’s cold damage. It can happen extremely fast. I did transport a plant the other and wrapped it in a scarf and kept it in my coat for the 30 seconds I was outside, but you can’t do that with a big plant like this.
Just don’t take home new plants in the winter lol Those leaves are toast, you can snip them off and hopefully the rest of the plant is okay and will push our new leaves soon!
Looking for advice.
Should I leave it be and monitor it?
Or is this a prune it all and pray for the spring
Definitely seems like cold damage to me. I learned the hard way when moving that, for some plants, even just being outside in cold temperatures briefly can cause cold damage (rip the bottom half of my fiddle leaf).
I’d guess the plant is pretty shocked at this point from so much damage, so be careful not to overwatwer in the next couple weeks while it tries to re-establish. Hopefully you should see some nice green new growth pop up, but you’ll likely end up losing all the damaged leaves here over time. My inclination would be to leave the damaged stuff and let the plant decide what to drop when, but others might disagree.
For future reference, I recommend not moving plants through air below freezing, especially sensitive ones or ones with thin delicate leaves like we’ve got here. If you do have to do it for whatever reason though, my go-to was minimizing exposure as much as possible and shielding the plants with my jacket or the like.
Hopefully it bounces back just fine, money trees are such pretty plants 💜
Also!! Once it’s a lil more stable, I recommend digging an inch or two down near the base of the stems to see if you can find a rubber band (if you do, remove it!). A lot of money trees tend to come with them and they can cause problems down the line. You’ll be totally fine for at least a few months, but just wanted to make sure to pass that along
Just want to say thank you to everyone who commented so quickly!
Going to let the tree decide what happens over the next few weeks.
Thanks again everyone!
You could always chop the damaged leaves and it should sprout some new ones fairly quick. I cut a bunch of sunburned ones off mine and it has blown up ever since
It’s not actually dead. If you don’t want to exchange it, You can prune the leaves that were frozen, drench the root ball in Superthrive and it will grow back! I like the idea of the trash bag for buying a new one. I would add those hot hands to the bag. To keep it warm. Beat to wait til temps are 55 and up tho. Good luck!