Air plants confuse a lot of people because almost none of the usual houseplant rules seem to apply — no pot, no soil, no watering can. Treated like little sculptures, they slowly decline; once the soaking routine is understood, they go from something quietly worrying to some of the lowest-effort plants around. They are genuinely … Read more
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 spend its first couple of years getting tall and thin, reaching for the ceiling while staying bare and leggy near the base. Cutting it back hard, further than seems safe, usually gets it pushing out new growth from nearly every cut point within a couple of months, turning into the full, bushy … 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
Fittonia is small enough to fit inside a glass terrarium, and it’s the kind of plant people don’t expect much from — until it keeps going and outgrows its container. It’s an easy recommendation for anyone who wants something colorful but is nervous about killing it. The vivid vein patterns do most of the work, … 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
An alocasia that goes completely bare one November, every single leaf gone within a couple of weeks, can look like a dead plant, and plenty of people nearly compost the whole pot. The better move is to leave it alone through winter: new growth typically shows up in early spring, unfurling from what had looked … Read more
Peperomia varieties barely look related to each other: one has thick, round, watermelon-patterned leaves, another has crinkled, ridged foliage that looks almost like a brain, and a third trails with tiny, closely-packed leaves along thin stems. This is one of the more genuinely diverse genera around, but the care across all of them is reassuringly … Read more
Tradescantia is an easy first plant to propagate: a few inches of stem snapped off a hanging basket and dropped into a glass of water will often root within days, and a single cutting can eventually become several separate hanging plants. This is genuinely one of the most forgiving, fastest-multiplying houseplants. Care factor What it … 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