Sperry: Peace lily grows best in bright indoor light

Published 5:30 am Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Dear Neil: This is my peace lily. It was sitting in my living room 8 feet from two windows. I have since moved it to my living room where there is little sunlight. Will that get rid of the leaves with black on their ends? Will that help it produce flowers?

Answer: I have perhaps 20 peace lilies in my greenhouse and a couple in our house. That browning is due to letting the plant wilt. You can use very sharp scissors to tailor-cut the leaves to remove the browned tissues, but nothing will green those specific leaves back up again. It might help to repot it into the next size pot or perhaps back into the same pot with fresh potting soil. Trim off all the dead stems and leaves. It will grow best in very bright indoor light. It sounds like your living room may be too dark. Spathiphyllums typically bloom a couple of times a year if they are growing vigorously. They do that on their own accord.

Dear Neil: I have a Blue Atlas cedar that was balled-and-burlapped and growing in a steel box right off my front porch. It has thrived for two years and it made it through this terrible summer just fine. However, in the past two weeks the extreme third of the end of the tree has branches that have lost, and are continuing to lose, needles. Some branches are flexible. Some feel dry. What might be happening?

Answer: I’m not sure your question should be in the present tense. It sounds like it happened perhaps three weeks ago. I wonder if the tree got marginally too dry, even just one time. Cedars like that don’t really give very good evidence of when drought is affecting them and in a hot metal container at those temperatures it would have been possible that it spent 12 or 24 hours nearing the permanent wilting point. I guess it’s also possible that it had just used up all its stored food reserves after the prolonged hot weather. While many plants can withstand a certain length of Texas-style summer temperatures, they eventually run out of gas. That’s why you’ll hear of some tree species, peonies, rhubarb, and even Kentucky bluegrass surviving a 5-day heat wave of 98F in the Midwest without issues, but they can’t withstand 90 days of that heat here in Texas. It could have been akin to that. I’m not aware of any pest problem that would have caused it.

Dear Neil: It was great to talk to you on the radio last week about my live oak with the holly-shaped leaves. It may be juvenile foliage as you suggested, but I thought I’d send you photos in case you wanted to see them for yourself.

Answer: I appreciate your extra effort in sending the photos. Judging from the trunk, this tree was hurt by the cold of February 2021. That’s what has caused the bark to separate (a process known as “radial shake” by foresters), thereby weakening the tree. As a result, it has produced new growth of a juvenile nature, just as it would have done had it been cut to the ground (as I mentioned on the air). These holly-like leaves are fairly common with young seedling live oaks. Shumard red oaks by comparison, have deep lobes in their leaves when they’re mature, but their juvenile leaves are egg-shaped. People plant the acorns, then assume they have weeds coming up where they expected seedling oaks. Hopefully your trees will recover and get back to normal soon.

Dear Neil: How can I kill this weed in my beds and also in my St. Augustine without harming my lawn and landscape?

Answer: It’s obviously not a grass, but a broadleafed plant instead. Spot treat with a broadleafed weedkiller (containing 2,4-D and probably two other herbicides combined). Now that temperatures are cooling you should be fine spraying within the St. Augustine, and as long as you don’t spray onto adjacent shrubs, groundcovers, etc., you should be fine treating the weeds in the rock beds.

Dear Neil: My sweet potato plant is in my kitchen window. Does it need to be in a larger container? It gets yellow leaves once in a while.

Answer: Sweet potato plants become huge. Yes, it needs to be in a much larger container – one with potting soil. But in all sincerity, it would fill that entire window if you took the best possible care of it. It also needs full or nearly full sunlight.

Dear Neil: Our live oak is producing these growths on its roots. Should we just cut them off, or would it be better to build a planter and cover them up?

Answer: Definitely do not build up the soil around the trunk and exposed roots of the tree. It is normal to see their surface roots. Use a groundcover to conceal them if that would help.

The unusual growths are called burls. To a degree, they resemble the galls we see on many oaks. I spent 20 minutes online to see if the burls are caused by any type of pathogen or insect. There are scores of gall-forming insects on leaves and twigs of oaks, but I found no reference to give me any cause for concern with root burls or galls. I’m going to advise you to get a certified arborist involved in working with your tree. You might also want to send samples of a couple of these growths and photos of them to the Texas A&M Plant Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in College Station. Their website will give you sampling and mailing instructions. I don’t have a good final answer for you.

For the record, I see holly-shaped leaves on seedling live oaks coming up around the burls in reference to a previous reader’s question above.