I have a prayer plant started over a year ago from a cutting. The cutting made roots, I planted it in a 4 inch pot, it grew new leaves and bloomed. After that, two or three new plants emerged on the sides of the pot and kept making new leaves, but the main plant stopped making new leaves and the existing ones starting drying at the tips and yellowing. I decided un-pot the plants to remove the older one and keep the young ones. Then started the drama.

When I removed them from the pot, there was a sight I hadn't seen before: about one third of the pot depth was only roots, no soil. Also, most roots were thin, but some very thick formations existed as well. Upon closer investigation I further noticed two chickpea-shaped, bulb-like formations. This was when I started looking online for information.

I found these posts (scroll down for answer to question) that suggested my plant may have root-knot-nematode (RKN):

http://en.allexperts.com/q/House-Plants-721/2009/4/Prayer-Plant-Roots.htm

http://en.allexperts.com/q/House-Plants-721/prayer-plants.htm

I started reading about the disease and got all freaked out about the danger of spreading it to my other plants. But then again, the roots don't look quite like photos that I could find online of RKN roots of other plants (couldn't find any for prayer plants).

I took photos of my plant and posted them at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/sosonel/PrayerPlantRKN#

Can anybody tell me if this is really RKN? It seems hard to get rid of, the only option for house plants appears to be keeping them in water that's hot but not too hot for some time (not too little, not too long). The temperature and time apparently depend on the plant and I couldn't find information specific to the prayer plant.

For now I extracted the older plant to the extent that I could and threw it away (didn't take any photos of it, the leaves shown in the photos are of the newer, healthy-looking leaves). I opened up the bottom clump of root (cut some in the process) to be able to take good photos of the bulb-like formations. I also cut one leaf (the only one that had a node above root level) and put it in water. The rest of the plant is in limbo at the moment, in a plastic bag to keep it isolated until I decide what to do.

Please help with any info you have, I really like my prayer plant and would like to salvage some of it.

Thanks!