Did you fertilize the plant?

The pompom look, foliage concentrated near apical meristems (ends of branches where extension growth takes place), is typical of plants with severe root congestion. Potting it up a size would be marginally helpful. What it really needs is a full repot, including bare rooting, root pruning, and a change of soil, which eliminates all limitations associated with root congestion.

The Spath likely needs to be divided.

Both plants look chlorotic (yellowish). Are you fertilizing regularly? When last? Whenever there are nutritional deficiencies of any of the mobile nutrients (phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, and especially nitrogen), the plant robs those nutrients from other (usually older) leaves to use as building blocks to support new growth at branch/stem tips, resulting in shedding of the older leaves, which also contributes to the pompom look.

Regular rootwork is mandatory if you wish to give your plants the best shot at realizing as much of their genetic potential as possible.

Al

Thank you for the suggestions, Al. I'll have to hunt for my houseplant fertilizer. Some things got lost in the shuffle of moving. I was thinking of re-potting, but I can't find anyplace around here selling potting soil this time of year. It's contra-intuitive that stores have it in the spring and summer when plants are outside, then remove it from their shelves when plants are being brought indoors for winter and need re-potting. Go figure.

Perhaps if you had answered my fertilizer question, we could know if that is the problem.

@debodun You're welcome, Deb. I had also asked about what you do about fertilizing, and noted how low fertility can play into the symptoms made manifest in your plants' foliage, or for the lack of foliage.

Ideally, you would be flushing the medium each time you water and fertilizing at regular intervals. About every 3rd or 4th time you water in summer, and every 4th or 5th time in winter. Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 provides complete nutritional supplementation from a single source (package) and has many other noteworthy attributes.

Repotting, more invasive than potting up, should be undertaken in the 2-3 weeks before the summer solstice, depending on where you live. That time of year finds plants high in reserve energy, and the ability to make food is peaking due to light intensity and duration. Sugar/ glucose/ the product of photosynthesis is the plant's true food. More food and energy reserves means a faster recovery and less vulnerability to insects and disease pathogens.

Al

What it really needs is a full repot, including bare rooting, root pruning, and a change of soil,

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in my world.. warped as it may be.. continuous repotting to larger and larger pots is limited by the size of house you can buy ... and sooner or later.. the pots and plants just get too big..

ergo.. therefore.. i would propagate the tips.. and once those were firmly rooted and properly potted.. i would just get rid of this big old pot ..

watch some of these.. and see how easy it probably is: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=croton+propagation&t=ffab&iax=videos&ia=videos

and im sure you will end up with more than you need and they can be gifted away ...

now.. houseplants are houspeplants for two reasons [among other of course].. first.. they propagate easily.. so they are rather cheap to make.. and cheap to sell.. go figure on that .. in other words.. they arent rare ... or hard to deal with ...

and second.. being defined as HOUSE plants.. they can handle the reduced light of being indoors ...

the corollary to being house babies is.. when you take them outside.. they NEVER go in full sun ... you put them in bright full shade .. where they will usually store a lot of energy for those drab indoor months of winter ...

just take a few cuttings.. pot them up and root them.. and away you go ... no need for another 5 square feet of floor space.. which most of us dont really have to spare ...

ken

I don't remember fertilizing my houseplants. I perhaps read somewhere that doing that improperly can cause damage to plants and they get all the nutrition they need from sunlight. I usually re-pot with commercial potting soil when the roots start protruding out of the drainage holes. Some soils contain fertilizer pellets.

Plant food is sugar/ glucose, and they make that during the process of photosynthesis. Nutrients, fertilizer, are the building blocks plants use to grow and are essential to all plant processes. Sunlight provides 0 nutrition, only little bundles of magnetic energy (photons) the plant uses to make its food - sugar.

If you keep doing what you've been doing, you'll get more of what you've got.

If you READ THIS and apply what you've learned. You'll very likely transform your growing experience into something much more rewarding than the frustration you're dealing with now.

Al

Thank you.