Is my elephant bush dead/going to die?
I’ve recently moved out of my parents’ house and initially I’ve left my plants at home while we get settled and I need to repot a few plants, which I couldn’t do in the new place. So I asked my mum to look after my plants, and she has a few of her own so she’s not a complete novice. However, life has been a bit hectic and when I came home for Christmas she admitted she’d lost track and couldn’t remember when she last watered all the plants, including mine. Most of them seem okay, but a few are looking pretty sad. One of the worst is my elephant bush: it’s had quite fragile leaves for a while that fall of easily, but now all the leaves have shriveled and/or fallen off, and a lot of the branches look shriveled as well. Some of them still look normal ish, and there are some bits of green on a couple of the ends where new growth usually comes. But I’m not sure if it’s beyond saving now or if there’s anywhere I could propagate a new plant from. #ElephantBush
13ft to light, direct
6” pot with drainage
Last watered 1 month ago
7
Hi @saskia.ej 👋. Can you post a current picture please? From your description it sounds like there may be parts to salvage 🙌. Elephant bush leaves generally fall off pretty easily but shriveled leaves sound like they’ve dried out quite a bit. You can probably trim it back to where there’s still some green normal ish parts. Elephant bush can be forgiving and bounce back! It probably needs a good drink and kept away from any heaters until it can recover.
@MariansOasis Hi! I thought I did attach a photo, but it doesn’t seem to have worked. Here are a couple - looking pretty sad 😓
@slayonium the same thing happened to mine when it dried up and it’s also winter near me can I salvage it?
@MariansOasis can it be salvaged I have some green the last leaf fell off the other day. Stem can mend but looks wrinkly at top should I cut back or chop off little at top to expose freen
@hungryowl771 it won’t hurt anything to give it a try! I’d be tempted to just put the stem in a glass of water and see if there’s any life left in it. Or trim it right above where your thumb is, that first branching, put that in water and see if anything happens. If the stem at the roots is mushy it may be too far gone so this way you’ve got 2 pieces and perhaps a chance that between the two you get one. The stem is pretty wrinkled so I’d say there’s a good chance you’ll end up tossing it. But experiment away and see what you can do!