Can this corn plant be saved?

[mngrdngrl]

I see this plant every morning at the coffee shop in my building. It makes me so sad so I finally asked the owner if I could try to save it. This plant is in really bad shape as you can see by the pics...


This is what the soil looks like. IRL, it looks like outdoos soil just plopped into the pot.


When you touch the stalks, the bark feels like it is coming away from what is underneath kind of like it is going hollow from the inside out. One of them even feels hollow from the top to the bottom. The store owner told me that if I could save it I could have it soooooo. I'm planning on repotting it with fresh potting soil this weekend, but I am not sure about how to treat the plant with it having four stalks and all. Any advice is appreciated. I'm off to google search too.

[Kisal]

That poor thing looks really sad!

If it were mine, I would just cut those canes into sections and start a whole bunch of new plants. Hopefully, there's enough life left in them to allow them to sprout.

It's always sad to lose a large plant like the one in your picture, but sometimes, starting over is the best ... or maybe even the only ... option. It's one way to avoid losing a plant altogether.

Perdue University offers this article with excellent instructions for propagating various kinds of plants. Scroll through it to find the information about cane-type plants.

[mngrdngrl]

I don't know you but I could kiss you! Thank you because all my google searches came up with corn on the cob plant care and not dracnae plant care. LOL

After looking at the directions on the link you provided, I noticed a few things. My plant the outside is not green at all. would I just cut the stalk off a few inches below where those leaves are right now because I don't see any buds on my plant? I will check again though. Is rooting mix the same thing as potting mix?

[Kisal]

Corn plant canes are brownish, so don't worry about the lack of green on them. The cane cuttings shown in the article are from a dieffenbachia, an entirely different species of plant. But the technique used to root the cuttings is exactly the same.

You can also cut off the stalk at the top, as you described, and root it. When you root a cutting from the end of a stem, where leaves are growing, it's called a "tip cutting."

[mngrdngrl]

Well I emailed my extension office with these pics as well. I looked closely at the plant this morning and saw some leaf buds, but they were all dried up and dead looking. I might just pitch it based on what the ext. office says. After, of course, I take the living leave off of them...

[mngrdngrl]

Well I ended up cutting the leaves and part of the stem away. Right now they are soaking in water rooting as we speak...

[bonsaiboy]

Did you keep the top or bottom cut? There are buds present in the lower portions of the trunk even if you cant see them.

[mngrdngrl]

No I just took cuttings of the leaves with about 2 inches of stem left on the end because the stalks of the plant were hollowed out and I wasn't sure if I would be able to work with that.