Simulated iOS not rendering some textures that real hardware can

I've run into a situation where some (not all) sprites (Texture2D based) render fully black in the iOS simulator, while they work just fine on my actual hardware (iPad mini).

The only thing that stands out about the black textures is that they tend to be the largest textures, though I believe the iPad mini can support anything up to 2048 square textures which is the max for my app.

Does anyone know what specifically can trigger this black-texture-in-simulator issue?