I purchased a beautiful dracaena marginata plant on fb marketplace. The owner had the plant for about 10 years and I fear I may be killing it! I live in Canada and during transport, the weather was very cold. The plant reaches about 9ft tall so I had no choice but to expose the plant to cold winds. The leaves immediately started to go limp and soft. I was advised to trim off all the dead leaves and leave it in a well lit room, not direct sun. It’s been a week and the top of the branches are starting to wrinkle and become soft and squishy. I haven’t watered the plant yet as we were told not to and were waiting for the cold shock to wear off. The previous owner said she watered the plant about once a month and gave it flower food sticks. Someone help! I love this plant and want her to get back to normal!
by doggogirly
10 Comments
Keep your fingers crossed that the stem/trunk remains firm.
It’s promising that the growing points haven’t collapsed.
Well. Calling a spade a spade, I would honestly prepare yourself for it to never restore the look it had. 😿
The persons instructions really go out the window. They grew an etoilated plant anyway.
Cut the dead and shrivelled off, give it the sunniest spot you can and water when dry. See how it goes for a few months at this point. If you can get it copious amounts of humidity then bonus points.
I nearly killed my Dracaena over the summer but I was able to coax it back with some good fertilizer and extra exposure to a grow light. Don’t lose hope right away, just give it time.
The comment about *etiolation*, I disagree.
If you look at the internode spacing, the growth is fairly tight for indoor, typical home cultivation.
It’s the nature of these plants to shed their lower leaves. If inappropriately underwatered, it can happen at an alarming rate.
Your problem will be providing enough light (duration and intensity) to the top of the plant to maintain relatively healthy growth.
Your second issue was transporting this during cold winter conditions. If exposure time was minimal, then the plant should be okay. The leaves will be ugly with no recovery. New growth may be stunted and irregular due to 1) the change in growing environments, 2) damage from the cold.
Unless, you can replicate the previous growing environment or improve on it, the plant will may show signs of slow decline over the long-haul.
A plant cultivated outdoors…
https://preview.redd.it/gk2e7p5dae8g1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1619903ce85924c0902a5777bde44a89c50b423b
It’s definitely been cold snapped and it may not recover. It should have been transported with a warm plastic bag covering to help it from freezing. Just an fyi, when removing the leaves you should remove them fully from the stem, not cut them like this. They should peel away easily from the stem. Going forward, you’ll have to chop the plant down to maybe 2-3ft, put it in good light, water very infrequently, and hope for the best.
The plant as you acquired was stretched for light and had clearly lost a lot of leaves over time.
Snipping the foliage isn’t really helpful because cutting leads to further necrosis.. Those damaged leaves are going to fall off anyway. The cold shock will not wear off.
My advice would be to prune it. Make clean cuts with a very sharp sterile blade. Pruning the top foliage will send a signal to the plant to create one or two branches down below.
That wrinkly stem is gone, but the other two you can chop back and it’ll grow from the nodes with enough light and care
Next time, wrap in a blanket and throw garbage bags over because it will not survive the cold wind. It is a death sentence to any foliage. I’d chop the stem back, and give it some copious bright light
Chop it back to good trunk and it may recover. 2-3 new sprouts will pop from each cut on a dracaena.
The tops are dying and shriveled, that looks like frost damage. How cold was your car?!!?
Cutting brown parts of the leaves is a waste of time, the plant will just drop those eventually.
Bad bad bad soil for a dracena. They need very well draining soil. A lot of light too. May be time for a repot, terra cotta pot and a grow light. Cactus soil, and pumice mixed 50-50.