Oh look, it's a shot of the plant before I got to it.
Fast forward to now. Poor thing has been growing in my room, which is considerably less humid than the greenhouse. As it has been a warm fall and summer, my room has been hot. At an attempt to regulate the plant's health and mitigate burnt leaves, I did occasionally mist the plant. At some point, I accidentally left the plant on top of direct sunlight for a few hours. The scarred leaves were not pleased.
Portions of the plant have also been cut off and put into jars of water to foster new root growth, acting as a sort of backup reserve in case I ruin the parent plant. I also did this to try growing the cuttings, which I trimmed off in an attempt to keep the plant in check. There are a few divisions sitting around, each growing in slightly different conditions. I tried an earlier potting media of bark and sphagnum moss, but that didn't work. A pot with bark, moss, and potting soil seems to be working so far, while the other cuttings are in water.
The plant now is rather straggly looking, with green stems and the typical purple-red leaves. New growth from the dormant stems/rhizomes is extremely spindly, the points at which they connect appearing to be weak. The space between the leaves is very large (can't remember the scientific term for this), nothing like the initial appearance of the plant. This combination makes the plant, while apparently healthy, appear ragged, haggard, and taking up extreme amounts of space.
Now, I'm not sure if this is a light, humidity, or media problem. I did repot the plant after I bought it, but the quality of the soil might have been a factor in the growth. Nutrient deficiencies, bug, bacteria, fungi, etc. come to mind. The division I repotted in the soil seems to be growing rather strangely too, with the bottom leaves falling off/drying out and the top leaves growing clumped...sort of like a tree. I'm pretty sure it's growing taller. Hopefully.
Sigh.
