 Prayer
Plant or Maranta leuconeura erythroneura
Family - Marantaceae
This plant will amuse you with its behaviour: close to the evening the leaves
start slowly folding up, until completely closed in the dark. Then it will open
the leaves back again in the morning. But if you noticed that leaves stay up at
daytime, it might indicate, that your plant doesn't get enough light, try to
move it to brighter location.
But then again, if location is too bright, the colors of the leaves might fade.
You need to experiment with placing maranta, to find it's proper location.
Prayer plant likes warm humid conditions. If you live in place with cold frosty
winters, don't put marantas on the windowsill too close to the glass in the
winter. It gets pretty cold there, and your plant will get brown edges on the
leaves.
That was my first mistake when I started to grow marantas. I thought those brown
edges were from under-watering or over-watering; after number of experiments
with watering (without any success), I tried to change plants location from
windowsill to the wall opposite the window - and that worked well, at the same
time fixing faded color of the leaves from too bright location. As for
watering - prayer plant needs to be watered regularely to keep the soil from
drying out. 
Also it's good to mist it in the morning with room-temperatured water. Once in a
while I put my marantas in the bath and give them warm shower, they surely
enjoy it.
For potting - the tropical soil mix is good. I add a bit of vermiculite to
better hold the moisture.
Here is the picture of the other Prayer Plant - Maranta leuconeura
kerchoviana. |
