r/BirdsOfParadise

This plant has been with my family for about 50 years. My grandmother grew it from a cutting and when her health declined and she could no longer live at home, I took it in. That was 10 years ago.

Since then it’s survived three house moves with me. It doesn’t flower often, so every bloom feels like a nice surprise and this one especially so given everything it’s been through with me.

Sharing because I’m ridiculously proud of it.

Hi everyone!

I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with my bird of paradise/Strelitzia…

I’ve had some yellowish mottling and lots of tiny dark specks on a few leaves. I checked the undersides with a flashlight and I don’t see anything moving. I also wiped the leaves with a damp microfiber cloth and the marks/specks stayed the same, so it doesn’t seem like surface dirt.

The plant is in a pot with drainage, inside a decorative outer pot. The nursery pot is pretty deep, around 50 cm. We’ve been watering it by giving it a proper soak in the shower roughly once a week, because the top 5 cm or so usually feels dry by then. But now I’m wondering if the lower part of the pot was still staying wet even though the top felt dry.

It sits near a southwest-facing window, so it gets pretty bright light and some sun. Soil looks fairly chunky with bark/perlite mixed in. The stems don’t feel mushy and I don’t notice any bad smell from the soil, but I’m still worried I may have been overwatering because the pot is so deep.

Some leaves also have splits and dry edges, but I know that can be normal for Strelitzia. The part I’m unsure about is the mottling and the tiny black dots.

Does this look more like:
- old pest damage, possibly thrips?
- overwatering/root stress?
- fungal issue?
- normal damage from the leaf unfurling and rubbing?

I’m planning to add blue sticky traps to check for thrips, but I don’t want to overreact with neem or pesticides if this is just old damage or watering stress.

Any advice would be really appreciated. ❤️

Hey everyone,
I’m curious whether anyone has seen this happen with a Bird of Paradise before.
I bought this Bird of Paradise as a single-stem plant around 7 years ago. In 2022, I noticed a strange leaf emerging from the centre of the plant and took a photo (Photo 1). It turned out to be what looked like two leaves emerging from the same growing point. They were slightly deformed, but the plant was otherwise healthy.
After that, the plant appeared to develop two separate growing points. Over the next couple of years, both sides grew almost in sync, producing leaves within a week or two of each other.
By 2024 (Photo 2), it was starting to look like two separate plants. You can also see the first flower spike in that photo. That year, only one side flowered.
This year (February 2026), both sides produced a flower spike, so I had two flowers, one from each crown (Photo 3).
The final photos are from today (July 2026). As you can see, it now looks like two plants sharing the same base.
When I repotted it recently, the root system appeared to be one solid mass rather than a parent plant with a separate pup attached.
Has anyone else seen a Strelitzia do this? Most information I can find describes them forming clumps by producing offsets/pups from the rhizome, but this seems more like the original crown split into two growing points.
I’d be interested to hear if anyone has experienced something similar or knows whether there’s a name for this type of growth.

I’m extremely excited ! That’s all I have to say - thanks

Hey all, my big girl had an extreme nosedive in health recently and I haven’t been able to get to the bottom of it.

I’ve had her for two years and this is completely out of the blue for me. She was doing great, pushed out a new leaf and rapidly started wilting and yellowing. She’s had water, fertilizer and decent light so I’m at a loss.

Is it wraps for her or is it possible to bring her back? This is my first one so I’m little more attached than normal. 🥺

First photo is the overall, second is the base stalk, third is her neighboring plant.

I just got this guy as a gift, I repotted him in better draining soil but something is going on with him and I’m not sure what. He sits in an east facing window