Indoor Plant Care Tips Guide

Readers who like mood music with their plant-related reading, and are by and large cool with drag queens,1 are encouraged to play the video below. Or anybody who just misses RuPaul, for that matter: what has she been doing lately? Everybody else can just proceed to the text. Skinny leaves, skinny stems, skinny petioles, fussy, high-maintenance, tall: what could Dizygotheca elegantissima be

I've seen these before, but this is the first one that was actually my plant. I've been thinking that this plant must be angry with me, lately, because I moved it a while back to a colder spot and it's been shedding leaves. But apparently if it's upset, it's not that upset. This is another plant I got as a cutting from "hopefulauthor" at Garden Web (the first being the Schlumbergera mentioned

So . . . you remember a few days ago, when I posted about ">Chlorophytum x 'Fire Flash,' and I said I didn't know how to get them to bloom but suspected that it might be a day-length, time-of-year thing? Well, it looks like I was half-remembering something correctly, because one of the two is preparing to flower again, which prompted me to look in the journal; they were both getting ready to

This is yet another plant I've talked about at Garden Web previously, owing to the odd circumstances by which it came to me. There are two plants in the picture here: the first one I found growing under one of the tables in the greenhouse at work, and the other one grew spontaneously in a pot of some other fern (I don't remember which for sure, but I want to say a Pteris), and then I took it out,

This isn't anything shocking or spectacular; I've seen Aloe flowers that were awfully similar (in fact, I have some going right now, on my A. 'Doran Black'), but even so. This is at least the single best example I've seen of how the Gasteria genus got its name (from gaster, Greek for "stomach"): the flowers do have little bellies on them, which you can kind of see on the lower ones in the picture

Yet another plant I brought home once, only to do terribly wrong and then throw out. This one, though, has a happier ending than most, since I eventually made up for the failure by growing a few that, knock wood, are doing okay.My current collection of Syngonium podophyllum.I don't see a lot to be gained by rehashing the whole story in tedious detail, especially since I've told it elsewhere. (The

So I posted about this about three weeks ago, and frankly, I didn't figure we'd get to the end of the story because I thought the plant would probably sell before I saw the flowers do much more. This is one of the frustrations of working with plants in retail: the Ficus maclellandii that grew figs has sold, so I can't follow their development. All of the Ludisia discolor with buds sold right

This is one of a series of plants I bought during a quest to get one particular plant. The plant I wanted was Euphorbia ammak; I wound up buying E. trigona and E. pseudocactus first, and then eventually got two enormous cuttings of the one I really wanted from someone on Garden Web.1The nice surprise is that all three have turned out to be great additions to the group, though in different ways.

We got a few of these plants in the fall, and they all sold except this one, which has gamely been killing time ever since. I was surprised to see it flowering a couple weeks ago. A number of people have picked it up or looked at it like they were going to buy, but so far, our lonely ornamental pepper is always a bridesmaid, never a bride.I tried planting seeds from one of the peppers, just to

WARNING: The following contains a bit of a rant. Readers of delicate constitution or sensibilities should not continue reading. Neither mr_subjunctive nor Blogger, Inc., nor mr_subjunctive's unnamed employer, nor Google, Inc., owners of Blogger, nor your internet service provider, are responsible for any injuries, whether physical or mental, nor any distress or anxiety, incurred by readers who

Those of you following the harrowing two-day saga of the green tree frog I found in the box of plants (original post here) will be pleased to know that the frog has been placed in a suitable home. Apparently one of the Iowa City Water Treatment sites has a good-sized terrarium in its lobby, and my husband took him there this morning at the advice of the local animal shelter. Since the camera was

And in the thrilling conclusion to the Breakfast Club plant series, we have . . . More name confusion. The species name is given in different places as Chlorophytum amaniense, C. orchidastrum, or C. orchidantheroides, and a few places say it's a hybrid and just call it C. x 'Fire Flash.' We will be emulating the example of the last one there, because I have no way of figuring out who's right, and