How long have you got the plant? If only recently, it may be just adjusting to your home. As I'm sure you know, these plants like a humid atmosphere, so a warm and shady kitchen or bathroom would be the right place for yours. The soil must be moist also, though not sodden. If you had a large plastic jar, a small aquarium or something similar, you could place it in there for a while to benefit from the humidity this would produce. (leave it in the pot when doing this to minimize disturbance of the roots). I believe the plant will recover very well after this; you can trim off all the damaged leaves and new ones will take their place in not too long a time. Good luck with it.

Hey there: Another cause of brown edges is excessive minerals in the water. If you see deposits on the pot or on the soil (They can be white, brown, orange or a combination) those are excess minerals. -Sandy

Sandy, those brown patches maranta family plants get, do you know if they are also mineral excess? I have mine in a very humid atmosphere and they get them. Two reared in the closed environment of a bottle garden developed them while inside. The usual cause given in books is lack of humidity, which can't be the answer in this case. What do you think? The patches are a very light brown colour, later becoming almost white, somewhat like cell damage on the surface. They vary in size from very small to quite large when they occur. There are definitely no bugs, and only the odd leaf is affected, not all. It happens mainly to the marantas and ctenanthes. Thanks for your opinion.

Hey Marguerite: If it were in this country I would look for alternaria blight, which is a fungal disease controled by fungicides like Captan or some other fungal disease. Sometimes a leaf miner can cause that kind of damage too but you say there are no insects. Wish I could give a better opinion but I have no experience with some of the problems you might have in Ireland. A third suggestion that comes to mind is a build up of heavy metals such as Aluminum. It is possible you could solve the problem by changing the soil. If you go that way I would pasturize the new soil first.-Sandy

Thanks, Sandy, at least you didn't throw up your hands in shock! So there's probably a solution, if it were something fatal you would have heard of it; I always use sterilized soil; the minerals could come in the water, I suppose. Instructions re. the maranta family always stress keeping the soil moist - I was thinking also of a type of oedema, perhaps it's a case of 'there's moist and moist'.

Hey there: When I was doing terrarriums-um-ums I found that if the top or sides of the container collected moisture it was probably too moist and a two or thee day period with the lid open usually solved the problem. It always drives me crazy when I get instructions that tell me exactly what to do but don't ever tell me what can go wrong. I have always learned more from my mistakes that my sucesses.:)-Sandy