I planted two young bird of paradise plants one year ago. They were in the ground, about 15 feet apart, receiving the same amount of water, sun, breeze, etc. One of the plants is doing alright, the other one started to put out malformed leaves about six months ago, three so far.

I read that BOP plants flower better in containers so last week I dag out the plant with the bad leaves and put it in a large pot with amended soil.

I've cut the bad leaves (hence the brown scar).



So, for every good leaf, the plant grows two or more bad ones. What's causing this?

Curling leaves are a sign that Strelitzia are not up taking enough water. There can be different reasons for this...the more light they get, the thirstier they become. But if their roots are damaged by something and can't uptake water, they will produce curling leaves.

Okay, then maybe I've helped it by uprooting it and putting it in a pot. Let's see what it does from now on. I'll cut this new curled leaf and, hopefully, the next one will be healthy.

Thank you, Gina.

I hope so.....when I lived in Culver City, everyone had BOP in their yards! They always seemed to be in bloom. Huge stands many years old, so I am surprised that you would have put it back into a container. If it gets root bound in the container, a while from now, you may have the same issue. Strelitzia are originally from South Africa, hot and dry. They love SO Cal though, like so many plants do!

Yes, they love it here. They are all over and this time of year the great BOP show starts. It's a fantastic sight.

I may put it back in the ground in a year or so. I want to see if it is true that they flower faster/better when the roots are contained. But this plant has been doing so poorly that it was a bit of an eyesore where it was. It looks a lot nicer now that's in the pot. The other BOP plant, same age and all, has done much better but I'm sure I'll have to wait at least a couple more years to see a bloom.

I get so jealous on my daily walks when I see so many well-established BOPs blooming all over. Some of those plants must be decades old.

I agree that they are all over in this area, but I have never seen that problem before. Are you sure you don't have a gopher, or something toxic buried under it? Please keep us posted as to how the pot works out.

I will, Carol. I've never seen it before, either. I checked the other BOP and one of the new leaves has a funny tip but it looks fine otherwise.

I haven't seen any gophers. When I uprooted the plant the soil looked fine. I put a very different plant (a Euryops) in that hole. It's been just a few days but we'll see how it likes the spot.

The BOP that I moved to a pot has several blemishes, holes and dry spots on its leaves, the other BOP doesn't.

That is strange. As an aside, have you ever seen the leafless BOP? Its a really cool plant but very uncommon. Sometimes I miss living in SO Cal....we had a guava tree, lemon an orange tree, night blooming jasmine, avocado tree...I have a friend still living in Culver City who has managed to grow and bloom large species heliconias in his yard (but whereas it would take one 2 years to bloom here in good conditions, it took him 10 years to get his first blooms). I'll never forget how elated he was when that bloom came out.

Yep! We have the temps here, but lack the rain and humidity to grow those tropicals that do so well in Florida.

I googled heliconia. What a gorgeous plant! I can imagine how your friend felt, he's a very patient gardener.

I prefer the looks of the leafed BOP but the leafless is very attractive as well.

here it is growing very will, it is very popular in all public gardens. It is very drought tolerable.

Hi Ron,

You are in Israel (I googled your location). How interesting that BOP grows well there too. What's your gardening zone? Here, in SoCal, we are in zone 10.

@_Bleu_@
on the map the coastal plain is stated as zone 10, in land, in the mountains.it is stated as zone 11.
But it is not exactly zone 10 or 11, because in summer it can got as hot as 105 F with humidity less that 30%, and in summer we might have even snow for a few days, an local BOP survived in both conditions.

Maybe we have a local variation of it, that was specialty selected and breed for a local climate.
You can see it huge sizes in a public gardens, up to 15-20 rhizomes in one batch, at least half blooming.

this is in my work (Jerusalem)

https://garden.org/thread/view...

The leafless ones are really rare (and expensive). They are probably more of a collectors item than anything else. I almost bought one once, decided to save my plant dollars to spend elsewhere though

Nice, Ron. I also like the lantana that shows behind the BOP.

Gina, good for you.👍