From my perspective, water is a constant negotiation. My flat, segmented leaves are designed to store moisture, but they are incredibly sensitive to your watering habits. The yellowing you see is my primary distress signal. Most often, it means my roots are suffocating. If my soil is perpetually wet, the air pockets around my roots are flooded, and I cannot breathe. This root rot prevents me from taking up water and nutrients, causing my once-plump green segments to become soft, mushy, and yellow. Conversely, if you forget about me for too long, the extreme drought forces me to consume all the water stored in my segments. They will become thin, wrinkled, and take on a pale, yellowish hue as I essentially begin to starve and dehydrate from the inside out.
I am an epiphyte, naturally thriving in the dappled light beneath the canopy of trees. My ideal home is one with bright, but indirect, light. The intense, direct rays of the afternoon sun are simply too much for me. They act like a magnifying glass, scorching my delicate tissues and causing a bleached, yellowish, or even reddish discoloration, often starting at the edges of the segments closest to the light source. However, do not relegate me to a dark corner either. Without sufficient light, my photosynthetic processes slow down dramatically. I cannot produce enough chlorophyll—the pigment that makes me green—to sustain myself. This results in a general, all-over pale yellowing and weak, stunted growth as I languish in the shadows.
My roots demand a specific environment to function correctly. I require a potting mix that is airy and extremely well-draining, much like the decaying leaf litter and bark I grow in, in my native habitat. Heavy, compacted soil, or soil that has broken down and become dense over time, will strangle my roots just as effectively as overwatering, leading to the same yellowing outcome. Furthermore, I am not a heavy feeder, but I do require some sustenance. A complete lack of nutrients, particularly nitrogen which is crucial for chlorophyll production, will cause a uniform yellowing across my older leaves as I scavenge nutrients from them to support new growth. An excess of fertilizer, on the other hand, will chemically burn my roots, preventing them from doing their job and, again, resulting in yellow leaves.
While I appreciate a stable home, I can eventually become pot-bound. When my roots completely fill the container, they become entangled and compressed. This dense root ball has difficulty absorbing water and nutrients efficiently, even if your care is perfect. The result is often a general decline in my health, manifested as an overall yellowing of my foliage. Alternatively, a pot that is far too large for my root system is also problematic. The excess soil holds onto moisture for far too long, creating a perpetually wet environment that my roots cannot escape, circling back to the root rot issue described in section one.
