I originianlly filed the following in hortboard until I found this forum: My ponytail palm has 5 "shoots," 4 of them are drooping down. I have cut back on watering thinking that overwatering is the problem. I have not watered him in 2 wks but I see no improvement. Can anyone help? I attached a pic as someone requested like the first one below. In the meantime, I took my baby out of my low light office and took him home for sunnier conditions. Unfortunately, my destructive twins decided to pull him out of the soil and pull off some shoots. Yikes! I decided to allow him to dry out of the pot a few days as I thought the original problem may have been overwatering. The roots are pictured below. I also tried scratching the trunk and found white bark underneath with some areas of black as pictured below. Is there any hope? The leaves are now falling off to touch. Can I plant him in potting soil with pea gravel and cactus/palm soil mix and pray for his return? I am really fond of him.
That looks really serious. The top looks like it has rotted off, cant do much to save that, the roots look like they've been ripped or rotted off, some are still white though so maybe save-able. The black parts in the trunk, are they mushy or soft??this could be from the rotting also. I would cut the plant off at about half way up the stem and see if its mushy and soft inside until you get to a part that is firm to the touch and whitish/green. It might shoot back from here, it will need full sun for this. Sorry to say this but I think you'd be lucky for it to come back from here. Try not to unpot/repot distressed plants as this can be more harmful for them than helping.
okay, i cut the top to about halfway and attached are pics. As you can see, half of the plant looks black still but half is good. I peeled away some of the bark at the caudex and same thing. Can I just cut or peel back the black stuff? What about the stem itself, can I cut it vertically and just keep the good half? I put it in well draining soil and am waiting a week to water as I have read in other posts. As I mentioned before, it had been uprooted by my kids. Thanks for any help, I am desperate to save him!
I'd just wait and see what happens now, water it once a week, just make sure the soil dries out between waterings. You might just get some new shoots. It doesnt look good, but i suppose miracles can happen with plants. good luck.
It doesn't look good for this one. Sorry. The fact that the bulbous trunk has partially rotted away and is now buried under potting soil is bad. I probably would have propped it up on top of sand and forgotten about it for a few months or longer to see if it would reroot. That bulb is supposed to be above the soil for the most part. I've seen them with better than 90% of it above the ground, but always at least halfway. They can be tricky, but this one has had several serious challenges, way more than I would expect it to survive.
