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Two days ago I received an Edelweiss flower in a pot as a gift. It's really important for me to take good care of it, however, I'm concerned I've done too many mistakes by now :( So I'm looking for some advice on how to fix them and not kill the poor plant.

It looked fine and fresh when I got it, but was in a very small pot, so I decided it was a good idea to repot it. I kept most of the original soil , just added a mix of mulch, sand and ordinary soil around it. I didn't water it, because I found the original soil to be quite wet and I had read that they don't like so much water. I was very optimistic after repotting the flower and placed it on a balcony that gets a couple of hours of direct sunlight in the afternoon, but overall there is a lot of light during the whole day.

Things turned for the worse yesterday, as it rained a lot and I forgot to shield the plant from all of the humidity. So when I got home it looked very bad, very wet and all of the leaves had dropped down, rather than standing straight up. I put it inside for the night, hoping it would recover and this morning only a few small parts were all good, most of them still down. So now it looks like in the picture below. I've put it outside again as it's not raining today.

A few important things: the flower was bought from a big supermarket store and it's basically impossible to find out where it was grown and under what conditions. Also, I'd like to keep it in a pot and not plant it in the garden, as I fear it won't survive there. I live in Sofia, Bulgaria, 600m above sea level in southeastern Europe :)

Any tips and suggestions would be highly appreciated, I really want to make things right!

Side view of the plant

View from above of the plant

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  • It makes me proud that such a well written question was produced by someone from my city. If one can trust old people's wisdom those flowers have disappeared even from nature so they are probably difficult to care for. I wish you (and the plant) all the best!
    – Vorac
    Commented Jun 29, 2022 at 0:45

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Turns out I got the answer myself :) The poor plant needed water...

I waited for a couple of days, carefully changing the plant's location according to the weather, but nothing changed. I decided to water it, after all it wouldn't hurt to try something different than what I was doing... and the next morning it was fresh and healthy as it was the day I got it.

I watered it extremely carefully, in the base of the plant, without getting its leaves wet. Here are some pictures of it now:

Side view of the healthy plant View from above

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  • If the original problem was truly overwatering I find it hard to believe that watering again is what solved the problem. Perhaps it needed a moment to recover from whatever was the problem, perhaps it was shocked from the replanting or not being in the supermarket anymore. Or "it rained the other day" == "the epic huge storm the other day".
    – Vorac
    Commented Jun 29, 2022 at 0:59
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    Actually it turned out that it indeed needed water every day during the hot summer days. It would start withering if I forgot to water it only for a day. This one grew to be an amazing flower and blossomed beautifully, with many many flowers. Unfortunately I lost it due to a really bad bug infestation in the autumn. Commented Jun 30, 2022 at 7:05

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