one young leaf grows bigger than ALL old leaves

2 years ago

Does anyone know why one plant has leaves on different sizes? Here is one of them. My Magnolia Alba recently grow a super long leaf. It’s much bigger than any other leaves around it. It’s green and shinny and unusual shape. The others are wider and weavy on the edge. This one is thinner, longer and not weavy at all. Here is a photo of them. The 8 days old is the biggest leaf. The one at center is more than a month old. The rest are older than a month as well.

Here is the background of this plant. I grow it under grow light and I am still trying to figure out its nutrition need. I sometimes over feed and sometimes under feed them. At the beginning of growing this plant I didn’t give them much fertilizer. Then I realized the problem then I start feeding them every other watering. Then it shown sign of yellow leaf, leaf drop. And the terminal bud(near the 1+ month old leaf) stay very small and take longer than usual to give new leaf. Then I feed this plant less often. About once every 4 watering. BUT in between feeding I did spray calcium sulphate water a few time on the top leaf because some new leaves are wrinkle and curl down. Then later on I found the soil ph is too high ( about 8). Then I dilute 4 grams of iron sulphate and give it to the soil. Then a few days later this biggest leaf grow like you see on photo. I found leaves grow in different sizes on one of my jasmine plant as well. I found this interesting so I share it here.

Comment (1)

Daisy England
2 years ago
It’s an interesting question. I have a small tree in my graden that has done the same. I found this that may be interesting -

The number of leaves on a plant is fixed mainly by the genetics of the plant which controls the arrangement of leaves on the stem. Of course, a bigger plant has more leaves, but it is not a simple matter to switch growth into extra leaf mass. Plants growing in drought conditions do DECREASE the area of their leaves (the leaves actually shrink). Therefore, to eliminate any stresses on the plants would encourage leaf growth. For Fast Plants, we would advise growth under a light bank with height of the plants adjusted daily to keep the leaves as close to the light bulbs as possible, watering via a wick system, minerals supplied through slow release fertilizers etc.

Plants are constantly balancing the amount of growth they put into shoots as against roots.

One feature that affects this is whether the plant is growing near other green plants. If a plant finds itself in competition with others, it will direct growth into leaf growth and away from reproductive growth (flowers, fruits, tubers or other storage organs). The plant can detect the presence of other plants within a metre of it by the spectrum of the light landing on its leaves. When its near neighbours are further away, it can afford to put more of its resources into reproduction.

There is a tool used by agronomists to explore how much leaf a crop produces. The Leaf Area Index (LAI) is the ratio of leaf area (one surface only) of a crop to the ground area upon which that crop stands. LAI values of up to 8 are common for many mature crops depending on species and planting density. Forest trees have LAI values of about 12 and many shaded leaves receive less than 1% of full sunlight
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one young leaf grows bigger than ALL old leaves

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Daisy England

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