Hey people!

I'm new here, so if I am posting this in the wrong place, please do redirect me!

I live in central Germany and bought an Amazonia Elephant's Ear together with some other plants a few months ago, during spring! I was dazzled by the beauty of this plant and wanted to care for it.

For the last couple months, however, I have seen my plant in what seems a weaker and weaker state, so I thought (as I do not have all that much experience in caring for plants -but I am keen to learn!-) I'll buy her some liquid fertilizer and apply it every two weeks, which did help in some way (2 new leaves came out and a flower is starting to sprout as of now), but some of the other leafs are still dying in this strange way and I don't know if it may be some type of parasite of infestation.

Around her and her soil there are a fair few fruit flies at all times (might have to do with her being in the kitchen?), and on her leaves I can see some sort of spider web with tiny white dust (I assume it's dust, it could be something else) particles, which I take off with my hand.

Attached is a picture of one of the biggest leaves



And this is a dying tiny one.



I've already taken a couple of her dying eaves out because I could see they would not recover.

What should I do? Thanks everyone for helping me save my plant

A bad case of spider mite attack. Treat with plenty of water on the leaves and with Bayer Masaï or similar. The mites can be terribly small, so use a magnifying glass to find them. They are there! With thousands!

Those flies are not fruitflies, although they may look like them. Fruitflies fly on fruit only, never on soil. These small ones fly quite differently compared to fruitflies and are Trauermücke (fungus gnats) ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) from the Sciaridae family. They live on fungi on too wet, rotting soil. Keep the plant a little drier and they disappear. They do not much harm on full grown plants, but their larvae may kill seeds/seedlings.

Ruud

I agree with everything Rudd has said. Your Alocasia appears to have a severe infestation of spider mites and I'm not certain but the foliage also appears to possibly have fertilizer burn.

African Mask (Alocasia 'Amazonica')
African Mask (Alocasia 'Polly')

I hope I am not too late to help. When a plant has pest problems as yours does (spider mites and fungus gnats), it is usually an indication that the plant is under stress for other reasons, such as improper potting, light or watering.

The mites can be treated by thoroughly wiping down all the leaves (tops and bottoms) with a solution of water and liquid dish soap. Make sure you get them all or they will reproduce and return. As Ruud wrote, allowing the soil to dry as deep into the pot as possible will deprive the gnat larvae of the moisture they require to survive.

The presence of the gnats suggests that you may have repotted your plant using soil that was contaminated. The repotting may also be the cause of other problems, especially if the pot is too large and the roots were unnecessarily disturbed by the repotting.

When properly potted, it is best to water this plant when the top inch of soil is dry or just before it starts to wilt just a bit. It also requires a location close to a moderately sunny window but protected from the direct rays of the sun falling on the leaves.

This is a gorgeous, but fragile plant that is not forgiving of mishandling or watering lapses.

Is this plant the same as 'Polly'? I have been growing (more like trying to grow) a Polly for 11 years now. It had rarely put out more than a couple of leaves. That is when it hadn't gone dormant. Very sickly plant.
Then I planted in Al's 511 and started using DynaGro Foliage Pro.
Results below:

Hi! I need your help please 😞 I am really distraught with my alocasia plant.. i got it 2 mos back and it was doing okay, even grew a new leaf! But right after that i noticed a problem in the other leaves, i am thinking maybe its a fungal infection.. can anybody clarify this please? And if i should just take down the infected ones? (Cos then that will mean only the new leaf remains) 😔😔😔 Pls help..

PS i live in a tropical area and keep my plant at the balcony, with indirect sunlight throughout the day.. watering only when top part is dry which is about once a week so far i haven't used any food/fertilizer

The last photo is the new healthy leaf :)

The symptoms are not of a fungus or any other disease that will spread. The leaf spots might be caused by too much sun or exposure to cold. More likely they are a result of less than perfect watering.

If your Alocasia is outdoors, keep it in shade at all times - no direct sun at all ever! Water it thoroughly (until water runs through the drain hole) when the top half-inch of soil feels dry. Use filtered or distilled water if your tap water is hard. Don't fertilize it. Avoid temps below 60 degrees F.

You can trim off brown leaf tips and edges, but no need to remove an entire leaf unless it is mostly discolored.

Hello,
I am new and live in Stockholm, Sweden. Someone gave me an Alocasia Amazonia. Though I have misted it and filtered sunlight for it there is something wrong with the plant. The leaves discolour and shrivel. There is no sign of any web.This photo is the best I can do to show what I mean. Unfortunately I am hopeless at photography. What can I do? Is this plant dying? I appreciate any help you can give me.

It could possibly be going dormant for a while due to stress. I had one that would do that every now and then but it always came back better than before. Don't give up on it. Maybe it just needs to rest and recoup.

African Mask (Alocasia 'Amazonica') will go dormant and as Kyle stated, that could be what is happening with your plant. Stress can occur due to change in light, temperature, watering.

I have African Mask (Alocasia 'Polly') and Elephant's Ear (Alocasia micholitziana 'Frydek') that both go dormant.

Mine do too. But they always pop back up. I keep their spaces marked with tags in the ground so I don't accidentally overplant them. I have had some species or alocasia come back from dormancy after not being around for a year or more. They produce tubers under the soil, and if conditions don't go to their liking they will just die back until the conditions are right.

I have a tendency to just dump pots that I see nothing growing in. I'm not even really sure if my little Alocasia's are here since the pots weren't labeled and with our recent move, I may have left them at the other house.

For mine, its a light thing more that anything else. When the days shorten with the autumn and approach of winter, some of the more unusual alocasias decide its not enough light and go dormant. Even though Polly is sold in almost every grocery store and box store on the planet, it is still a really tropical plant, and it it doesn't like the current state of affairs, it will take a nap until it does. I have a very unusual Xathhosoma, X. wendlandii, that goes dormant every year at the same time in late September/early October. This seems to be a rare plant, its almost never offered for sale, and I don't know one single other soul that grows it (although I know some other people must). But when the days start to lengthen and the temps become stable and warm with no more 50's at night, it springs back up for the season.
I also have an Alocasia loweii 'Purple Prince' that grows year round outdoors in a big clay tub, it goes dormant when it gets cold and then comes back in Spring. Loweii is one of the 'leathery' alocasias like Polly

Hi guys, can you help me with mine? Everything was going ok with my Polly until I noticed these weird coloured spots on her! Is this a pest situation or a watering problem? It's just on this one leaf. The others look fine.

Thanks in advance!

Hello everyone! I hope all your plant friends are doing well!

About two or so months ago, I was hit by a major spider mite infestation that did a number on my friends, where I lost one completely and sustained heavy damage to a number of others. My Alocasia took a hit as well, one that went a little unnoticed during the first treatments to get rid of them. Since then, I have been keeping a very close eye on Cullen, the Alocasia. Nearing the tail end of Cullen's spider mite treatments, "he" even managed to bloom. Now, however, that the mites are gone, Cullen just isn't bouncing back, and almost looks worse than in the height of the infestation.

Since the infestation, all of my friends receive a close, but not overturning each leaf, inspection at least once a day. If something looks out of place, a closer inspection is done (leaf turning), but there are no new signs of those pests.

What is happening to Cullen is almost the same as mrpelafio's images of their Alocasia, and as the general consensus was that it was a pest infestation, I am even more curious now as there are no mites or other creepy crawlies.

Aside from pests, the only other problems I am aware of having are that I mistakenly put my Alocasia in a heavier potting mix (which will be rectified within the week) and the sunlight is growing more intense.

Currently, my Alocasia is located before my west window that has a sheer curtain to diffuse the light.

Foolish me for simply following what was on the tab stuck in the pot, as I am realizing most of the information is untrue.

From all of your experiences, would the soil and lighting issues be enough to make Cullen suffer so? --Or do you believe there is a more sinister infestation to blame?

--I am rather leaning away from another infestation as none of the surrounding more 'delicious' plants are being hindered. All except for the Alocasia are flourishing again--even my croton that was one of the hardest hit.

Thanks for your time and happy gardening!

You know, I wish I could help you, but my plants are all in the ground and I have stopped offering advice to people who do not also grow in the ground. Well, all except for the plants in my Houseplant Habitat (which is a 75 gallon terrarium). But even in there they are 'in the ground' not in containers...I have Anthurium radicans, variegated Alocasia Frydek, green Alocasia Frydek, Alocasia Infernalis, Anthurium bessaea x magnificum and will soon have a new Alocasia cuprea in there. Everything is doing well and putting out new leaves. I am a greenhouse grower, for things that are not hardy here, and a yard grower for things that are. I know there are people who can advise you. And I am sure they will. One of mine, in the ground

Alocasia 'Polly' (the correct name is POLY) is a hybrid alocasia that was originally a cross between Alocasia longiloba x Alocasia sanderiana. ALocasia longiloba is just what the name implies: it has a long leaf that does not have a serrated edge. It is more silver-grey in color. ALocasia sanderiana is commonly called the Kris plant and lends a darker color and the serrated edge. The alocasia I posted above is a Sanderiana 'Nobilis' which has a touch of unstable variegation.

These plants come from the Philippines and Malaysia. They are grouped in with the alocasias that comprise the 'jewel' group (which contains some of the thick leaved succulent type species like sinuata, reginula, cuprea, Dewey's reversa, dragon scale, and infernal. These alocasias are different in their needs than the other 'non-jewel' alocasias like A. macrorhizza, A. gagnea and the other large growing upright alocasias.

They prefer to be underpotted, and they prefer to be kept on the drier side as far as watering is concerned, more like succulents. The former moderator of this forum, LariAnn Garner, did much research and publication in Aroidiana about the jewel alocasias, and the consensus back in about 2007 when they first started to become popular among collectors and eventually came out onto the mainstream market due to being tissue cultured (many species have since regressed back into the realm of very expensive collectors plants unfortunately and are no longer being tissue cultured domestically) was that they need to be treated like ORCHIDS. Potting mix should be loose, a mix of orchid bark, coarse perlite, charcoal, peat, maybe substitute nut shells or aliflor, and a small amount of a good quality potting mix (I use Jungle Growth) is ideal for these plants, as well as for many other tropical plants like Etlingeras, Heliconias, bromeliads, and orchids (minus the peat and potting mix),

The idea is to soak the mix and let the roots uptake what they need, the rest should drain off very quickly, then it should dry out a bit before bring watered again.

Here, where I live, many restaurants and other businesses use plants like 'Poly' as outdoor decor. They are potted, left in sometimes up to half day full sun, and neglected. They do not get daily water. They may get rain water. They usually thrive.

Most people who grew and lost jewel alocasias lost them because they tried to treat them like regular house plants. Overwatering killed a lot of them. Poly, sanderiana and nobilis (even sanderiana and nobles are somewhat rare again now) is more tolerant of too much moisture, but that is usually the culprit when they start to decline

Gina1960, thank you so much for all that information and clarification on the plant's name. It seems like the only thing the plant tag had correct was that it originated from Malaysia! --It recommended keeping the soil consistently moist and was even originally potted in a super heavy mix of sphagnum and nothing else.

That's the last time I pay attention to those plant tags....

Thank you for clarifying that they like to be treated like a succulent and orchid. That, I can do, easily. --Isn't it funny how sometimes when a plant is neglected, it thrives like crazy? I am going to keep an eye out for Jungle Grow at my favorite nurseries, thank you for the suggestion!

I have most of those soil ingredients, minus the charcoal, nut shells/aliflor, and probably what is considered GOOD potting mix. I primarily have been using a cactus/citrus/palm soil all across the board for my house plants--doctored up depending on plant. Would it be beneficial if I used the cactus mix with the orchid mix, perlite and bit of peat, instead of a heavier "all-purpose" soil mix?

Alocasia amazonicus is actually not a real species. Neither is Alocasia x amazonica. The plant known as ALocasia amazonica was a chance hybrid that appeared in the greenhouse of a nursery in Miami in the 1950's that was called The Amazon Nursery. The owner named this hybrid after his business, but it was never patented. ALocasia amazonica is a hybrid of ALocasia watsonia (also known as A. longiloba) x Alocasia sanderiana. It is sometimes confused with A. micholitziana (which is a true species plant). Aroid expert Julius Boos was the one who traced the origin of ALocasia amazonica. The 'trade names' applied to it were POLY and AFRICAN MASK. These persist today, but the name POLY has been changed over time to POLLY. And to make matters worse, box stores often misidentify ALocasias. I was in Lowes just today to get water softener salt and cruised the plant area and saw this. ALocasia LAUTERBACHIAII being sold as Alocasia POLY. This is why it is very hard to trust plant labels sometimes. These 2 plants could not be farther apart in morphology

I agree, you can't rely on labels anymore; it's bad enough that the little plastic stick type labels are always stuck in the wrong plants but it appears now they even put the incorrect pasted labels on the pots!

I like the looks of that Baroque Sword (Alocasia lauterbachiana) and might have to check the Lowes in Vero Beach to see if they have any! I've had Alocasia 'Poly' a/k/a 'Polly' since around 2007 or 2008 and it goes dormant at times and I forget about it. I wasn't even sure if it was still around since we moved and I left a few plants (or rather my husband just didn't bring a lot of things when he was making the last couple of trips!) but I spotted the pot with 'Poly' beneath some shrubbery when I was weeding last week!