I've kept mine on the moist side too but I thought someone said they can go dormant during the winter season and will reemerge in spring? I get so confused anymore though ... I could very well be thinking of another plant.

You are right, Lin. She posted this info on another thread as well, which encouraged me to buy the plant.
http://garden.org/thread/view_...

I have one Maranta on the screened porch and the other inside the house and I haven't let either of them dry out, I make sure to keep the soil moist at all times but maybe with the dryer weather this time of year, they just naturally go dormant. I'm not pitching these like I've done with Maranta's in the past ... will keep watch in spring to see if I notice new growth.

I've seen the dormant thing too. Since they're in group pots, I don't go digging for carcasses if something passes on, which I thought Maranta had done. But new leaves showed up this spring! Calathea ornata did the same thing, but since going dormant, hasn't made more than 1 leaf at a time. IDK what they want either. I gave what I have to offer, which is all I can do.

I'm the person who stated that the plant will go dormant if it is allowed to dry out or if the humidity is not high enough. They only want moist soil and high humidity. The soil should be kept barely moist in the winter, though. They don't need bright light. One year, as I was tossing my supposed dead plant, I found out that they grow rhizomes like Calatheas, to which they are closely related. So I repotted them and kept them from completely drying out over the winter. Then when it warmed up, I placed the pot outdoors wherein it resprouted. Last winter, my plant surprisingly did not go dormant. I must have done something right.

I am curious... what does a going dormant plant look like? Can someone take a picture?

Kim, like some trees, many plants will lose all their leaves and enter a dormant like state until warmer weather arrives when they begin producing new growth. Plants with rhizomes will completely disappear ... leaves, then stems and nothing is left but what you think is a pot full of soil. I have a Gloxinella lindeniana that completely disappears when it goes dormant. I can't begin to count the number of plants that I've thrown out because when there's nothing but soil showing I forget what was in the pot and thinking that something died, I just dump the contents! I remember once having a container of Cupid's Bow (Achimenes) and I dumped the soil over the edge of my deck into a flower bed thinking the plant in the pot had died ... the next spring I kept finding little Achimenes plants popping up in that bed.

Agreed, if nothing else is in the pot with a dormant (non-woody) plant, it just looks like a pot of "dirt," no leaves. A dormant woody plant would look like a deciduous tree in winter, with trunk and branches but no leaves. At least with woodies, you can snip a little piece and see if there's still green inside. When something completely disappears above the soil level, it's pretty darn mysterious, and usually assumed dead.

When the marantas and related plants go dormant, the leaves curl up and turn brown. The stems turn a papery brown and thin. It just looks like a dead plant. Eventually these fall off, leaving as mentioned, an empty looking pot.

Mine is actually going ganbusters! I seriously doubt our humidity is the reason because if my hands are any indication, our humidity level is very low. (Maybe I'll check it later.) I do wonder, however, if mine is going crazy because it is up high. I have it sitting on the hutch of my desk, so it's probably in a spot of the room where the heat is gathering somewhat. Mine is receiving some indirect light, but I don't know whether it would be considered medium light or something else. Here's a picture of my prayer plant today:




..you can see the new growth fairly readily in this. There's sort of an 'upper level' and 'lower level' of leaves. The 'upper level' is all new growth, as is the long, hanging branch (and a few of the leaves near it) on the left.