Philodendron have glossy heart shaped leaves that cling to the green vines. They have small, dark green leaves and can grow 8-10 feet long. (Photo by Ginny Rosenkranz)
Indoor plants add so much beauty in a home, but they also do an amazing job of cleaning the air we breathe, making your home healthier, and can improve your mental health.
Choosing the right plant depends on the amount of sunlight that comes into the room that will host the plants. Low light is available in a room that faces north or north-east, where early morning sunshine can brighten a room for just a few moments.
There are a lot of tropical plants that thrive in low light conditions because in the tropics, they grew under the shade of large trees.
They also need a bit less watering as they are slower growers.
Plants like the Cast Iron plants, many tropical ferns, vining plants like Philodendrons and Pothos, stately miniature Parlor Palms, broad leafed Prayer Plants and arching Spider plants and many more.
With the exception of the Spider plants, most of the low light loving plants only produce beautiful foliage.
The Cast Iron plant has dark glossy green, narrow long upright leaves, and as its name implies, is very easy to take care of. It thrives in low light and does best with watering every other week.
Plants can start out small and slowly grow 2-3 feet tall and 1-2 feet wide.
Boston Fern can start out small and grow 8-12 inches tall and wide. They are very ancient plants, living on earth before plants made seeds, but they make wonderful house plants. Their arching fronds provide a woodland feeling, and they are one of the top 10 house plants that provide clean air by removing both formaldehyde and xylene.
Vining plants can be grown in hanging baskets or even trained to grow up a small trellis, but they need to be trimmed back at least once a year to encourage new healthy leaves. Both Philodendron and Pothos have glossy heart shaped leaves that cling to the green vines.
Philodendron has small, dark green leaves and can grow 8-10 feet long while Pothos has larger leaves that are green with variegated creamy white or yellow and their vines can grow 20-40 feet long.
Pothos also removes formaldehyde from the air. Parlor Palms has graceful arching fronds that bring thoughts of sunny beaches inside the home.
They can be kept small by leaving them in small containers, or repot them every few years to allow them to grow to 4 feet tall and 2 foot wide.
The Prayer Plants come in many shades of green but are often found with green foliage accented with reds and yellows. New varieties have an outer band of dark green with the center in shades of pink or red.
Prayer Plants leaves can grow 12 inches long in an oval shape and can grow from 6-36 inches tall and 6-24 inches wide depending on the cultivar.
They prefer humid air but will live in dryer air and even thrive in air conditioning.
The colorful leaves will rise upwards as night approaches, and fold downwards in the morning, like praying hands. Spider plants have gracefully arching long thin leaves that are medium green and some have a band of white in the middle.
They need a bit more sunlight because they produce charming tiny white flower at the tips of green arching stems. If the flowers are not pollenated, they will drop off and new foliage will grow, creating a waterfall effect.
Plants can grow 8-24 inches tall and up to 36 inches wide.
The Spider Plant is also excellent in cleaning carbon monoxide and filtering other harmful impurities like formaldehyde, xylene and toluene. There are different varieties, one that is solid green, others have white margins, and then there is ‘Bonnie’, a compact form with curling leaves, perfect for smaller areas.
Medium light house plants are often those that bloom, and need the extra sunlight to support the flowers, while others are plants that have colorful foliage, and need the extra light because they have less chlorophyl, the substance that makes plants green.
Medium light can be found from an east to south-east window or a window with light filtering curtains.
Some of the medium light sensitive plants include African Violets, Christmas Cactus, Peace Lily, Moth Orchid, followed by colorful foliage plants like Caladiums, Dracaenas, and Tradescantia.
African Violets come in three sizes, large, standard and miniature, but all have soft velvety leaves that form a beautiful rosette. The original plants only had purple flowers, but plant lovers tend to love not only the traditional colors but thrive on new or unusual colors.
Now it is possible to find flowers in white, pink, blue, lavender, violet, maroon and deep purple. Flowers can also be found with single blossoms, semi-double, double, ruffled, star or wasp shaped.
Leaf shape can also vary from round to heart shaped or oval and the leaf color can be bright green, deep green, silvery green or green with creamy white edges.
Because of the velvety texture of the leaves, African Violets to be set on a light bed of pebbles or gravel then watered from the bottom up, so the plants don’t sit on the water, they sit above it.
All house plants should have their foliage cleaned with a soft moist cloth except for the African Violet which needs to be cleaned with a clean dry artist paint brush. Christmas Cactus are formed from leaves that link together and create an arching form.
They like their soils to be moist but not wet, and need less water in the winter months. Apply fertilizer lightly during the summer, and move the plants into a room that will not receive any extra light but the sun in October in order to encourage them to bloom from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
The flowers come in almost pure white, the lightest pink to dark pink, purple and deep red, with bicolor of pink, purple or red with white. Peace Lily are not true lilies, but have the bright white flowers that glow against the dark rich green of the foliage.
The plants like to be lightly watered and do better a bit on the dry side. They also grow better in smaller pots rather than being transplanted to larger containers.
With 40 different varieties, they can grow from 1 foot up to 8 feet, and are able to clean the air of ammonia, benzene, formaldehyde, trichloroethylene and xylene.
Moth orchids are the easiest of orchids to grow, needing bright indirect light and having aerial roots that wrap around tree trunks and branches rather than roots that need to grow in the soil.
Plants are usually sold planted into a container filled with bark chips with some of the aerial roots in the bark for stability and the rest of the aerial root over top of the bark.
Watering Moth orchids once a week can be done as a drench with warm water over the roots and bark, then letting the container drain before putting the container back on its saucer.
The other way is to add one, two or three ice cubes on top of the bark — not touching the aerial roots. The ice cubes take time to melt and are absorbed by the bark to share with the aerial roots.
The roots should change from silver white to pale green when they are well taken care of. Moth orchids are usually purchased when in bloom which is a good idea because if watered correctly, the flowers will bloom for up to a month and sometimes longer.
The old flower spikes should not be trimmed off right away as the orchid often forms new flowering branches along the old flower spike. If no new flower spikes emerge, trim the old flower spike back to about a half-inch above the second node or swelling along the spike above the foliage to encourage new flowers in a few months.
Caladiums are often grown outside in the heat of summer, but they can also be grown indoors. Plants start from a tuberous corm which produces either heart shaped leaves that grow 12-30 inches tall or lance shaped, ruffle-edged leaves that grow only 12 inches tall.
The leaves can be white with a green border, white with green veins or white with red veins. They can also be white over green with pink spots, or bright pink with red veins or even red with white veins.
As corms, they will eventually need to rest, and the leaves will dry up. Let them dry and leave them until the new growth begins before watering them again.
Dracaenas are grown for their beautiful sword shaped foliage rather than their flowers, but for the foliage to be so bright, the plants need medium light to thrive and grow into small trees.
Dracaena ‘Lemon Lime’ new foliage is dark green edged with bright lime and stripped with pale green, while the Dragon Tree grows to a height of 6 feet with thin dark green leaves bordered by dark red while the Tricolor grows the same but the thin leaves are green boarder by white and then red. ‘Florida Beauty’ is often called the Gold Dust plant, growing only 2 feet tall, it has broad dark green leaves spotted with cream yellow.
The Corn Plant is a Dracaena that can have all green or green with bright yellow bands and grows about 6 feet tall, looking very similar to corn grown in the field.
Tradescantia is often called the zebra plant due to the stripped purple and green striped leaves. It grows like a ground cover, rising 6-12 inches tall then cascading downwards.
Plants can be trimmed to encourage new, brightly colored foliage. Some varieties have smaller leaves and are pinker than dark purple.
Plants prefer to grow in moist but well drained soils.
There are some beautiful blooming house plants that can enjoy direct sunlight. Among them include Alocasia, Sansevieria, Jade Plants, Kalanchoe and Haworthia. Alocasia has large heart shaped leaves that are dark green, and some match the dark green leaf with silver veins that change the leaf into a mask.
‘African Mask’ is a clump forming rhizome that produces beautiful leaves from the rhizome, which is a type of root.
The plants grow 1-2 feet tall with the leaves almost the same size at the top of each stem.
A second Alocasia is called Elephants ear that grows 2-4 feet tall with 2-3 foot leaves that are all green with lighter green veins and a ruffled edge.
Sansevieria is also called Snake plant and Mother-In-Law’s Tongue is a thick leafed plant, very dark green with green bars across the leaves, with a strong upright form rising in a clump about 1-3 feet with a thin width of 2-3 inches.
It is very hardy and very drought tolerant, so first time plant lovers will be forgiven if they forget to water the plants once a week.
There are a number of different varieties including Ghost which has a silver green color and Sansevieria Gold Dust which has the dark green in the center and golden yellow framing. Jade plants are long living dark green plants that grow about 2 inches each year.
They are called succulents because like a lot of desert plants they need full sun and can hold a lot of water within their leaves and stems to live through severer droughts.
As a house plant the Jade can grow 3-6 feet tall, while Jade plants grown outside can reach 10 feet tall. Another succulent is the Haworthia, a group of small, slow growing succulents that all grow from a rosette of fleshy leaves about 1-2 inches long.
Some of the names include zebra cactus, pearl, star widow, cushion aloe, and all have slightly different shaped leaves.
They thrive in full sun, take up very little space and are very forgiving if not watered every week.
House plants give us so much more that being a pretty plant, they can help our mental attitude, they can clean the air we breath and, yes, they are very lovely and add beautiful artistic forms to our homes.
But many of these beautiful house plants can be dangerous if nibbled by our pets or children, and should be kept up out of their reach.
(Editor’s Note: Ginny Rosenkranz is a commercial horticulture specialist with the University of Maryland Extension.)
