Frosted Houseplants

How to save a plant left for too long in the cold.
Frosted Houseplants
Prune out all dead leaves and any branches that are obviously dead. K.-U. Haessler/Shutterstock
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Q: I am so sad, and I hope you can give me a glimmer of hope. I moved my houseplants indoors for the winter, but I missed one whole group of plants that were on the other side of the house. I had moved them there to get them into a sheltered spot while I moved the rest in, but I forgot they were there. The nighttime temperature dropped to about 25 degrees. There are big pots of a jade plant, a Ficus tree, a peace lily, a mother-in-law’s tongue, a plumeria, and a few small plants. They’re all losing leaves and wilting. What can I do to help them out?
A: All of the plants that you mention are tropical plants that don’t like temperatures in the 40s, let alone below freezing. One of the ways that cold-weather plants defend themselves against the cold is by using sugars as antifreeze. They start doing this in the fall and by the time a freeze comes, they’re able to withstand ice crystals building up inside their tissue. Another mechanism is to allow water to escape the cells before they freeze so there’s room for the ice to expand in the cells. Some cacti do this. Tropical plants aren’t able to do these things because they come from climates where they don’t have to.

On the tree-shaped plants, you’re going to see many, if not most, of the leaves fall off. That’s fine if the buds on the branch, at the base of where each leaf was, aren’t also dead. Since the cold was for only one night, there’s a chance that not all of the buds were killed. The buds will send out new growth within a few weeks. If the bud at the end of the branch dies, other buds will grow—kind of like if you pruned the end of the branch. If the branch tissue was also killed, then even if the buds start to grow, they will not last.

The peace lily and mother-in-law’s tongue plants grow from crowns and rhizomes at or below the soil level. An overnight freeze probably didn’t kill the buds at this level, so cut off all of the dead leaves and watch for new growth.

Plumerias grow outdoors in Southern states, where they’re exposed to cold temperatures during some winters. They lose all of their leaves in the winter and grow them back in the spring. Being outdoors, they go through the fall, and they can handle the occasional cold spell. Your plant was exposed to a quick drop in temperature and may not be as ready to handle the cold. I expect it to be fine, but it may not send out new leaves until spring.

Prune out all dead leaves and any branches that are obviously dead. Leave anything that might make it to see what happens. This way, you can see if the plant is continuing to die or is starting to recover.

Don’t fertilize for a few weeks, as we don’t want to burn any roots, and this isn’t the time of year to promote too much growth. If the plant is dead, you would just waste any fertilizer on that plant. Water as usual, except don’t overdo it on plants without very many leaves.

(Courtesy of Jeff Rugg)
Courtesy of Jeff Rugg
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Jeff Rugg
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