Calathea

Brown spots on your calathea? Check these 3 clues — spot shape, location, and soil state — to identify the exact cause before treating.

Calathea leaves curling? Use our 5-minute diagnostic table to pinpoint the cause — then get exact fixes for humidity, water, roots, and pests.

Your calathea is wilting despite wet soil — that’s root rot, and watering more makes it worse. Learn which of the 5 causes you have and how to fix it.

Calathea stems stretching and spacing out? This diagnostic guide identifies all 5 causes — from light starvation to overfertilizing — and gives you the exact fix for each.

Your calathea stopped growing for one of 5 diagnosable reasons — identify which one in under 2 minutes with a root-and-soil triage method.

Your calathea is drooping — but which of 5 causes? Use soil moisture and leaf condition to pinpoint the problem in 2 minutes, then fix it.

Match your calathea’s exact leaf-drop pattern to the right cause and fix — 7 causes explained with the biology behind each one.

Most calatheas will never flower indoors, no matter how good your care is. Here’s what actually causes it — and how to fix the ones you can.

Seven calathea leaf patterns that tell you exactly what’s wrong — and the specific fix for each, including the fluoride myth most houseplant guides get wrong.

Your calathea’s tips don’t brown at random. Find the exact cause — fluoride, drafts, or moisture — with one diagnostic test per cause and fix only what’s broken.

Let’s be upfront: calatheas are not the easiest houseplants. Their dramatic leaves — striped, spotted, velvety and rippled — are genuinely beautiful, but they’re also genuinely demanding. They communicate unhappiness fast. Brown edges appear overnight. Leaves curl. Patterns fade. And most beginner guides soft-pedal all of this. This one doesn’t. This is the honest guide calathea beginners actually need: what …

Oh, Calatheas. These beautiful plants are both a joy and a bit of a riddle, and I’ve discovered this in more than 15 years of gardening. I recall the day my Calathea orbifolia decided to protest. Its gorgeous, wide leaves curled inward and looked like they were going to die. My heart fell. I had done all I believed I …

You probably want more of your Calathea’s beautiful leaves in your life if you adore it. But before we get our tools, we need to know one important thing about these beautiful plants: the only way to successfully grow a Calathea is to divide it. Calatheas are a type of plant called a rhizomatous plant. This means that they grow …

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) The Allure of Soilless Calathea The subject that both novice and veteran plant owners are interested in is: can the beautiful and notoriously picky Calathea really flourish in water? You might have seen gorgeous pictures online of a prayer plant’s colorful leaves rising gracefully from a transparent vase and thought, “Could I get that same …

It might be distressing to see your gorgeous Calathea, a plant with stunning, prayer-like leaves, start to wilt and die. You can sense a rush of terror, but the most crucial thing to do first is to take a deep breath. If you take your time, you may often save a Calathea that is having trouble. Before we get into …