William Davidson - Doctor Houseplant: An Indispensable Guide to Keeping Your Houseplants Happy and Healthy

An indispensable guide to keeping your indoor plants healthy and happy

WILLIAM DAVIDSON

Photography by Janneke Luursema

2020 Quarto Publishing plc,

This edition published in 2020 by Cool Springs Press, an imprint of The Quarto Group,
100 Cummings Center, Suite 265-D, Beverly, MA 01915, USA. T (978) 2829590 F (978) 2832742 QuartoKnows.com

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ISBN: 978-0-7603-6986-9

Digital edition published in 2020

Art director: Gemma Wilson

Designer: Eoghan OBrien

Photographers: Janneke Luursema and Ian Howes

Copy editor: Alison Leach

Project editor: Anna Galkina

Publisher: Samantha Warrington

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Houseplants and indoor gardening have been undergoing a renaissance in the last few years, particularly among people keen to introduce greenery into rented apartments and houses. As well as being affordable, nothing helps to instantly create a lively and inviting interior more than houseplants. It is possible to start small and build a plant collection as confidence develops, and they can be transported easily when moving to a new home.

With this newfound popularity, every plants individual needs must be taken into consideration, particularly if they have been chosen on impulse for their beauty or sculptural shape. While some plants are easy to care for, some of the most spectacular may need a little extra love and attention.

Forty two of the most popular houseplants are represented in the pages that follow, with all the information you need to help them thrive, including advice on pests and diseases, illustrations to help identify problems, and an easy-to-follow care guide. Every plant is listed under its most common name, with less frequently used common names listed below. Latin names can be found above and to the left of the common name.

The easiest way to care for your plants is to observe and listen to what they say, otherwise the rules are straightforwardin time you will learn to trust your intuition and common sense. For everything else that youre unsure of, follow the advice in Doctor Houseplant and discover the joy that comes from watching plants fill your home with beauty and life.

Silver Vase Plant

O riginating from tropical South America, this is not only one of the most exotic flowering houseplants, but also one of the most durable. Its foliage is very coarse and edged with quite vicious spines and its coloring varies from light gray to dark red. The recurving and overlapping leaves form into a natural watertight urn shape, which gives the plant its common name of urn plant. In the plants natural jungle habitat this urn fills with rainwater or heavy dew which, together with insects, twigs, and other debris, can provide nutrients and water for the plant for many months in a drought.

Perhaps the most spectacular time in the life of the urn plant is when, after a number of years, it produces its fascinating bracts. These may vary in shape, becoming studded with tiny flowers that are mostly intensely blue. Additionally, this plant is epiphytic, which means that in the wild it grows on trees, by becoming lodged between branches or around rotting nurse logs, for example.

Although the commercial grower propagates urn plants from seed in optimum conditions, this is not advisable for amateurs. It is much better to remove offsets from the base of mature plants and to pot these up individually in a loose mixture of peat and perlite.

Urn plants can take as long as five years to grow to the flowering stage. Because of this, they are quite expensive to buy. Choose a plant which has bracts showing above the urn shape formed by the leaves, but not one which is so advanced that it is flowering.

Varieties

A. rhodocyanea This variety, also known as A. fasciata, is most commonly available. It is has gray-green foliage and a fist-sized bract in a clear pink dotted with tiny flowers of an intense blue. The bract remains colorful for six months. When the plant has flowered, the main rosette from which the bract emerged dies off and smaller plants develop at the base of the main stem.

A. fulgens discolor A much smaller plant than A. rhodocyanea, with a more open rosette and leaves with a green upper surface and red underneath. The flowers are purple, spread along the stem.

Common Concerns

In keeping with the general tolerance and easy care of this tough and durable plant, you will find that it is rarely visited by pests.

MEALY BUG This may attack older bracts. Gently remove the bugs with a small toothbrush dipped in rubbing alcohol.

The curving leaves should be tough, grayish-green, and the bract a clear pink with no sign of browning. A fully grown leaf may be 12 in (30 cm) in length. The cup-like centre from which the flower stalk rises should never be allowed to dry out.

Ideal Conditions

LIGHT AND POSITION The urn plant is a bromeliad and these usually object to a dark location. In good, strong light with partial sun the leaf coloring will stay bright and attractive. Although the plants are tough, do not place them in drafts or near heaters.