Best BOD owners,

I have a bird of paradise appox 1.5 years old. I have been really exciting of its growth and sadden when he loses the smallest leave.
I Guess thats just the process.
I haven't really thought about it, but i have a situations thats beginning to be worrisome.

My bird of paradise is beginning to lean to one side because of 1 leaf that grew last month.
I have just done a massurement. Every new leave is approx 1.5 inch(4cm) longer that the previous one.
Lets call the current leave, leave "F". Leave "E" was 18 inches leave "D" was 16 inches and leave "C" was 14 inches.
Now leave "F" that comes after leave "E" is a whopping 28 inch(71 cm) long. 10 inches longer that the previous leave. Its weigthing the whole plant down. Tomorrow im planning to buy a bamboo stick to keep that leave up, cus its kinda concerning. Have one of you had this happen before? i live in the Netherlands, can this be because of the sudden extra sun light after the winter period??
See picture, its the left upper leave

Birds of Paradise need lots of good strong sunlight. 4, 6, 8 hours or more. They really are not happy indoors.
They prefer warm temperatures.

You could just cut off the new largest leaf and rebalance the plant's appearance. The plant won't mind.
Or, cut off some of the smaller ones. It sounds like the plant is on a roll. No reason to slow it down.

Each new leaf being bigger than the previous is a good sign that its growing. What kind of bird of paradise is it? Some of them want to be 10 ft tall and from what I can see of the leaves, that is one of the big ones.

Put it closer to a window and it will stand up better. The petiole (leaf stem) will be stronger and not flop over so much.

He was in the sun during the growth of last leaf. But because the leaf didn't grow perfectly i thought that it got to much sun. So i moved it a little away from constant direct sun light.
See picture for the abnormal leaf growth.

I thought it would fix after awhile, but it never did.

Its a strelitzia nicolai.

This being a tropical plant, and you being in Netherlands, I doubt you can give it too much sun.

You could always repot it without damaging the root ball if possible, then lift it up 1-2 inches and straighten out the central stem. Looks like the current pot has plenty of space. Do you rotate your plant every week or so? This would help in keeping the plant growth "balanced".

"Birds of Paradise need lots of good strong sunlight. 4, 6, 8 hours or more. They really are not happy indoors."

Big Cattle, I am going to have to disagree, depends on where you live. My dental office has large, gorgeous ones year round with only bright light year round (though windows are large). In fact, last time I went to the dentist, had to touch them as they looked so perfect, I started to think they were plastic! I LOVE the Netherlands, but it has a very overcast climate, makes a big difference. They will not only survive, but grow year round if they get bright light year long. However, always remember, if this species (S. nicolei) IS happy, it will soon grow TOO HUGE for most indoor spaces!

41NorthZone7b said: However, always remember, if this species (S. nicolei) IS happy, it will soon grow TOO HUGE for most indoor spaces!

Oh, I don't know... How tall is your ceiling?

Well, he did say 'most'. I'm sure some people have 20' ceilings with bright light, somewhere.

You could put in a skylight... unless you live downstairs.

I used green bamboo garden stakes and staked each stem to hold my Bird of Paradise upright. It looked great once it was all staked and the stake color matched the stems so they hardly showed. Unfortunately the poor plant got mealy bugs when I added a smaller Bird of Paradise to the pot and I fought them for two years and finally gave up. Out it went to the compost pile.