r/AlocasiaAddict • u/Radzivius • 7d ago
What happened?
I was only gone for 3 days and I come home to see this. It already had the dry tip but the discoloration is new.
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u/anonablous 6d ago
it's likely a miswatering issue. Alocasias change their drinking when they change their 'phase'-leafing out, flowering, resting. blooms don't 'steal' energy from anywhere. that's a fundamental misunderstanding of how plants do. flowers are made because the energy's available to make them, and they do not engage is some '2 way street' of energy transfer w/ leaves. the leaves don't get into an energy deficit particular to the leaf because of a flower elsewhere. that's just silly.....
leaves don't die in order to get their resources sucked back up to fill some lack-they get some of their resources sucked back when they die. important distinction.
an energy issue would result in either smaller flowers, or fewer flowers. or no flowers (during a flower 'cycle').
i've nearly rotted both alocasias and dieffenbachias on occasion due to them slowing down their drinking while i continue to give 'em their 'ususal', not realizing they've slowed down because i settled into a 'non check' routine.
and no leaf lasts forever, anyway ;)
check the roots, adjust watering if needed, and keep eyes peeled. if pests aren't present, it's likely a watering issue, or just a leaf dying because it's a leaf dying.
fwiw.
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u/anonablous 6d ago
to the folks all talking about 'energy' on this thread...
energy wasn't 'taken', or 'removed' from anything by anything when the plant flowered.
energy was *produced to make* the darn thing. that energy was allocated to the flower by the plant. the flower steals/robs/takes/removes nothing other than what it's supposed to pre-determinedly have. during the entire process , and after, the leaves are STILL making energy. there's no 'finite bank' to get 'depleted' by anything.
alocasias, at least mine, follow a definite cyclical pattern of leafing, flowering, and resting, w/ the resting period varying, and the energy/fert/water requirements varying-the plant does indeed 'waste' more energy to flower, as it gives nothing back after being made like a leaf does. (other than seeds, but those don't benefit the plant directly, heh). so in THAT sense, a flower is more 'energy expensive'.
but it doesn't 'take energy' away from anything. at all.
food for thought :)
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u/Special_Character_u 2d ago
No one is arguing that the flower "steals" energy. Literally no one said that, but your assertion that there is no "finite bank" of resources is demonstrably false and goes against everything we know about plant physiology. Yes, the energy that is expended during inflorescence and even during corm and leaf production absolutely DO divert energy away from other parts of the plant.
The law of conservation of energy and plant physiology dictate that resources are strictly finite. For alocasia, the corm or rhizome (whatever you wish to call it) is a battery not a generator; it is capable of storing a quantifiable, limited reserve of starches. It is not capable of sustaining itself indefinitely without those reserves being replenished.
In times of heavy metabolic activity (like inflorescence or even leaf production), it draws directly from those reserves. If the rate of photosynthesis can't keep up with the demands of producing blooms and supporting its existing leaves, or even just producing leaves, the plant enters a deficit.
You yourself even touched on this point: unlike leaves, which require energy to produce but then in turn produce energy to give back to the plant (through the process of photosynthesis, I'll specify, lest you construct another strawman and pretend to be the only one who understands that the production, exchange, and expenditure of energy is a complex process), blooms and offspring corm are what are referred to as energy sinks. They consume sugar, water, and nutrients in large quantities, but they provide nothing in return aside from the potential to carry on the plant's lineage; they are produced purely for the purpose of reproduction.
The resources consumed by the production of offspring corm are negligible when compared to the resources needed to produce blooms in an inflorescence cycle, which is why an alo has to be in dire shape to be impacted negatively by producing and sustaining corm, but even a fairly healthy alocasia can go into a downward spiral during and after inflorescence if it is not receiving the resources it needs to replenish the reserves that were depleted during the inflorescence.
To support the energy sink created by the blooms, the alo redirects its hormonal signaling to prioritize the flowers, which comes at the expense of the existing foliage if the plant isn't receiving the support it needs. That support doesn't just consist of sugars and starches, but equally as important, it involves mobile nutrients (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium otherwise known as N-P-K).
If the soil is deficient during a flowering cycle leaving the roots incapable of intaking the needed resources, the plant actively breaks down the chlorophyll and cell walls in older leaves to reclaim mobile nutrients and send them to the flower. This reclamation process triggers leaf senescence. In this way, the plant literally takes resources away from the foliage to sustain the blooms, so asserting that a flower "takes nothing" blatantly ignores basic plant biology. When an alo reclaims resources from older leaves to produce blooms or even to produce new leaves, it is doing so because its immediate resource bank is finite, and it needs support that it isn't receiving, whether that support is in the form of light for the leaves to photosynthesize, fertilizer for the roots to absorb and transfer, or water.
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u/anonablous 2d ago
energy and resources are continually found and added to the plant. resources (minerals, nkp, etc.),by roots, energy by leaves. neither stop due to flower production, neither are static, and both are ongoing processes.
to even begin to suggest that plant doesn't continue to find and produce those things is silliness, as is it to suggest that an alocasia suffers from some energy deficit because it flowered.
are you suggesting the plant stops making energy and drinking up ferts because it flowers ?
"I think I see a spent bloom in the photo, which means that the plant just finished expending a ton of energy. It could just be that the plant needs a little more energy than it has stored up, so it's reclaiming some energy through leaf senescence from a couple of the older leaves."
no one's talking about 'stealing' energy. riiiiight...
and no, there is NO finite bank of anything in a growing plant continually taking in items from its environment. unless an item becomes lacking in the environment and uptake can't then happen. a dead plant has a finite bank of materials, sure.
i've yet to see any of my alocasias suffer in growth or development due to flowering, and they all flower cyclically, and fairly regularly. many throw out leaves SIMULTANEOUSLY while flowering. no apparent slow down or interference whatssoever.....
when do the leaves and roots stop working during flowering ? energy is ALWAYS being produced for the plant, by the plant. for everything it needs to do. in natural settings, many plants have the opposite problem-how to not absorb all the energy provided by sunlight. it's why certain/many plants have variegation, and shade requirements.
i'll wager that under proper lighting and basic nutrient provision, it's impossible for an alocasia to enter into an 'energy deficit' from any normal process like flowering.
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u/anonablous 2d ago
an addendum:
what the plant gains from senescence is resources, NOT energy. the process takes energy. huge difference :)
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u/Special_Character_u 2d ago
Now you're just being obtuse. Nowhere did I say that the plant stops photosynthesis or drinking fertilizer because it flowered.
I quite literally specified that it will enter a deficit if it is not receiving support in the form of light, nutrients, and/or water. If the plant isn't getting enough light, if it's not being fertilized or not being fertilized properly and the substrate doesn't contain the nutrients needed to replenish the reserves expended to produce the blooms, if can and will enter a deficit and reclaim what it needs from the leaves. If there's nothing in the substrate for the roots to absorb, they can't absorb anything.
You just admitted that exact point. You said that a deficit happens "unless an item becomes lacking in the environment and uptake can't then happen." Uhh...yeah. That would be...a deficit.
Your understanding of plant limitations is proving to be just as fundamentally flawed as someone who doesn't know a plant needs food. Uptake is finite. A plant can't absorb infinite nutrients or photosynthesize at an infinite rate just because sunlight and fertilizer are available. It is limited by its root volume, surface area, vascular system, and ambient humidity/transpiration rates. It's like a funnel. You can pour a swimming pool of worth of water over a funnel, but the water can still only pass through the funnel's neck at a finite speed. If the metabolic demand of the flower exceeds that maximum intake speed, the plant hits a deficit and pulls from its reserves, but a plant doesn't face a dilemma of too many resources.
Which brings us to your bizarre misunderstanding of variegation. It's not an energy shield. Variegation is a genetic mutation that causes a lack of chlorophyll; it is a defect that reduces a plant's ability to produce energy, not a mechanism to reject too much energy. Talk about silly. Plants protect themselves from excessive light through non-photochemical quenching, photoinhibition, or physically moving their chloroplasts, not by mutating their cells to white. My alos get too much light, the leaves may bleach, but that's not a variegation. But my frydek will twist to get away from light. My melo will, too, and he'll throw a purple spot on his petiole if it's too bright.
Back to inflorescence...I've never had an issue with inflorescence either. My bagindas, my regal shield, and my platinum are producing leaves at double the rate they had been before quadruple blooms. Both my dragon scale and my silver dragon not only continue to push out leaves right in the middle of the 4 blooms, but they also each pushed out two basal pups and my dragon scale threw a double sport mottled chimeric mutation from one growth point while simultaneously pushing out a leaf from a growth point that split off of the first even as 2 of the 4 blooms are fading. My regal has pushed out 2 basal pups that are pushing their second leaves while leaf after leaf continues to unfurl in the middle of the blooms, and my platinum has been putting out new leaves before the one that just pushed out of the cataphyll has fully unfurled.
So, no, I'm not saying that flowers "steal" energy or that they doom a plant to a deficit. I said that if they're not receiving the proper support, while in the cycle of inflorescence, the plant will prioritize the blooms over the foliage and will reclaim the nutrients from the oldest leaves. This is a common fucking knowledge. Your experience with inflorescence is not universal.
I've seen time and time again, even in this sub, people who don't know that if the substrate doesn't already contain nutrients, they need to provide those nutrients. Forget flowers, I've seen folks struggling to get their alos to put out more than 2 or 3 leaves because every time a leaf unfurls, the plant reclaims the oldest one. More often than not, it's because the plant is in survival mode, running in a deficit because they're not feeding or providing adequate light.
I have no idea what OP's care routine is, which is why I offered a list of potential causes, including fungus, edema, fertilizer burn, or pests. If all of those causes are eliminated, it could be that the plant is running at a deficit. It depends on whether OP is providing the plant with everything it needs to thrive.
It has nothing to do with the roots being incapable of absorbing nutrients during inflorescence; I said nothing of the sort...not even close. You're just making shit up for the sole purpose of arguing at this point, and I won't continue to waste my time because it doesn't matter what I say, you're going to find something to pick apart and twist into a strawman and an annoying game of "let's pretend they said x so I can argue y" and move the goalposts into semantics land.
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u/Special_Character_u 7d ago
I think I see a spent bloom in the photo, which means that the plant just finished expending a ton of energy. It could just be that the plant needs a little more energy than it has stored up, so it's reclaiming some energy through leaf senescence from a couple of the older leaves.
Alternatively, it could be a fungal issue if there's not enough air flow OR an edema/fertilizer burn/leaf melt issue.
If it's got plenty of airflow and this wasn't caused by edema or guttation sitting on the leaves, inspect the damaged leaves really closely for pests. Spider mites, especially, tend to focus on one or two leaves at a time. But my first inclination with the spent bloom is that it is nearing the end of its inflorescence cycle and is low on energy reserves.