Treat a Christmas cactus like the desert cacti on the windowsill — bright blazing sun, water once in a blue moon — and it tends to just sit there sulking, never once flowering. This plant is actually an epiphyte from Brazilian rainforests, distantly related to desert cacti but living a completely different life clinging to … Read more
The best thing about a ZZ plant is watching a new shoot come up. It emerges as a single tightly curled spear, almost like a fiddlehead fern, bright chartreuse and glossy, before slowly unfurling into the familiar dark green fronds over a couple of weeks. It’s one of the more satisfying things to watch in … Read more
The first time a spider plant sends out a long arching stem with a tiny plantlet dangling off the end, it can look like something is wrong. That’s just what a happy, slightly root-bound spider plant does — it throws out babies almost as a reflex. Once that’s understood, there’s less reason to fuss over … Read more
Peace lily is the plant that shows watering doesn’t have to be a guessing game. It droops dramatically when it’s thirsty, leaves going soft and flopping over the pot in a way that looks alarming the first time you see it, then perks back up within hours of a good watering, good as new. Once … Read more
A snake plant can sit in a dim hallway corner for close to two years with almost no direct attention, watered maybe once a month, and just keep growing new leaves the entire time. It’s the plant to recommend first to anyone who says they’ve killed every houseplant they’ve ever owned, mostly because it’s genuinely … Read more
Succulents on a north-facing windowsill can go eight months or so before the problem becomes obvious: they stretch into pale, leggy versions of themselves, reaching sideways toward the one bright spot in the room. It’s easy to assume succulents are just easy, low-light plants because that’s how garden centers seem to display them, tucked into … Read more
Heartleaf philodendron is a good first plant for anyone who has just started paying attention to what they own instead of just letting things sit on a windowsill: it’s cheap and the tag says it’s hard to kill. That turns out to be mostly true, though overwatering it out of some misguided idea that more … Read more
A fiddle leaf fig, a rubber plant, and a weeping fig can share the same room and still react to it very differently. The fiddle leaf is notorious for dropping leaves over the smallest change, even just rotating its pot, the rubber plant barely seems to notice anything short of neglect, and the weeping fig … Read more
Monstera has a reputation as a finicky, demanding plant that needs a whole setup to keep alive. In practice, a small deliciosa with maybe two leaves and no fenestrations yet turns out to be one of the easier houseplants. The reputation for being demanding mostly comes from people wanting the dramatic split-leaf look fast, which … Read more
Pothos has a reputation as the plant you can’t kill, and for the most part that’s earned. A two-dollar cutting in a jar of water on someone’s desk looks too neglected to survive, yet it keeps going for years, sprawling across a bookshelf and dropping the occasional cutting into a new jar. But “hard to … Read more