Air plants are easy to buy thinking they are basically decorations — something about “doesn’t need soil” gets translated into “doesn’t need much of anything.” A couple of months later they have shriveled, curled, and gone a dull gray, and it is tempting to think they might have been fake to begin with. They weren’t, … Read more
A schefflera can drop nearly a third of its leaves in the two weeks after coming home from the nursery, and it’s easy to be convinced the plant has already been killed. That’s completely normal, just the plant adjusting to a new spot with different light and humidity than the greenhouse it came from. New … Read more
Coming home to find a fittonia completely flat, every leaf collapsed over the rim of the pot like someone let the air out of it, is alarming — it looks dead. Watering it anyway often has it standing back up quickly, like nothing happened. That dramatic, almost theatrical wilt is completely normal for this plant, … Read more
A tradescantia bought for the vivid purple and silver stripes running down every leaf, then tucked onto a shelf a few feet back from the nearest window, can have every new leaf coming in a plain, uninspired green within a month. It’s easy to think the plant is dying, but it is just responding to … Read more
An arrowhead plant can end up looking nothing like itself after about a year: the cute little heart-shaped leaves it was bought for give way to long vining stems with deeply lobed leaves that barely resemble the original shape. It’s easy to assume something has gone wrong, but this is just what syngonium does as … Read more
A Chinese evergreen is described by everyone as nearly impossible to kill — and then it gets left on a windowsill through a cold snap, and the leaves curl and droop within a couple of days. This plant’s reputation for toughness is mostly about tolerating low light and neglectful watering; it’s actually one of the … Read more
Yellowing from the bottom up soon after getting a dieffenbachia is common, and trimming off a damaged leaf without thinking twice about the sap is an easy mistake. Touching your lips afterward can leave your mouth tingling for the rest of the afternoon — a reminder of exactly why this plant earned the nickname dumb … Read more
A ming aralia moved across town — same watering schedule, same pot, same general light situation in the new apartment — can drop nearly half its feathery leaves within days anyway. Nothing about the care changed, but the plant’s situation did: this is genuinely one of the most reactive houseplants to any kind of disruption, … Read more
Putting a rhipsalis on the sunniest windowsill and watering it on the same sparse schedule as other cacti, on the assumption that a cactus is a cactus, backfires within a few weeks: the thin trailing stems turn pale and papery in the strongest sun and shrivel from lack of water everywhere else. Rhipsalis is a … Read more
A calathea bought on the assumption that it is the same easy prayer plant as the one at home can have leaf edges that turn crispy and curl inward within a few weeks, even with the same watering schedule. Calathea and prayer plant are related but different genera, and calathea is considerably more particular about … Read more