Episode 330: My pick of the best flowering houseplants
Every day for the next week I’ll be picking my top seven flowering houseplants, explaining why i adore them and telling you how to grow one in your home. Day seven is going to surprise you!
Day one - the flamingo flower
It’s sexy, it’s from South America and you need one in your home this autumn! Hear why this aroid epiphyte is one of my absolute favourites.
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Transcript
© Jane Perrone. Originally published at janeperrone.com. Please do not reproduce or republish without permission.
[0:03] Watcher, it's On The Ledge podcast and it's flowering houseplant week because we love the flowers, So here's the deal. I'm going to pick seven of my favourite flowering houseplants and each day in the coming week, I'm going to be telling you about one of them, a short, sweet podcast that covers all the basics on that plant's care, where it comes from, etc.
[0:32] Etc, so that you can expand your mind about the options when it comes to flowering plants indoors. Because I think so much of the time we focus on the foliage and we don't give the flowers the attention they deserve. They are, after all, the plant's way of reproducing and often provide a way of telling one species from another, although obviously that's been somewhat superseded by genetic testing. But anyway, what I want to say is I love houseplants that flower and make a beautiful display of it, and so should you. So without any further ado let's kick off with today's houseplant and this will be a surprise for any long-term listeners to the show. It's an aroid.
[1:20] I'm not normally known as the biggest fan of aroids but this one I think is one of the best flowering houseplants. It's Anthurium andrianum, the flamingo flower, painter's palette.
[1:36] Whatever you decide to call this plant you cannot deny its incredible sexy looks. Let's talk about where it comes from to start with. It hails from Colombia and Ecuador where it grows in trees. Yes, this is an epiphyte, something that lots of people don't realize. Usually it's up growing in the crook of a tree. So if you have a look at your anthurium flamingo flowers roots, you might be able to tell actually because they look a bit like moth orchid roots. They're juicy and thick and they can be used to anchor the plant and to pick up nutrients.
[2:14] That is one of the things you'll find with these plants if they're left and somewhat neglected. Oftentimes these roots are everywhere and that's a good sign that the plant needs a repot. But that epiphytic nature I think makes them one of the easiest houseplants there is. Let's just put it this way. My sister's kept one alive and my sister is not.
[2:38] She would fully admit a particularly good houseplant keeper. If you want them to flower regularly though I think you need to give them a bit of love and the main way that we give plants love well it's light it's just purely light, So these do really well on a north, east, west windowsill. They will love it there in the winter. We find probably on a south-facing windowsill, provided it's not absolutely baking hot. I can't see that being a problem. Mine is on a north-facing windowsill, but with a window above. And it's in the kitchen, so it gets a nice boost of humidity. Because remember, this is from Colombia and Ecuador. It's going to need a reasonable amount of humidity do not stick it next to a hot radiator this winter but if you get it growing you'll find that it will flower very continuously, mine I bought it from not another jungle.
[3:40] Uh I think last Christmas and it's been flowering almost ever since I think it had a little bit of a pause of a couple of months but it's now putting out new flowers and what flowers they are you can see why this is called the painter's palette because you've got the spade the modified bract that embraces the spadix the inflorescence the stick with all the flowers on it, and together they do look a bit like a paintbrush and a palette or maybe something ruder but I mean I'm not going to.
[4:13] Labor the point on that use your imagination is what I would say but the key point here is that the bract the spade bit is not actually doing anything in terms of attracting pollinators it's just there as a kind of a guardrail for that spadix which is where the action happens now i'm going to use a few words here that are may not be familiar to you but i want to tell you about this because i think it's interesting the inflorescence so the stick with loads of tiny male and female flowers on it is what is known as protogenous.
[4:49] Fancy that. And all that means is that the female flowers do their thing before the male flowers. This means that the plant doesn't self-pollinate. Instead, it needs to attract pollinators from other plants. And it does that by producing this fluid, this sticky, clear fluid from its stigma, the stigmatic fluid. So once your spadix becomes sticky, that means that it's receptive to pollen from other plants. And then once that stage is over, then the male flowers are ready to produce pollen. So that's how this plant works, how the pollination biology works. And it's as far as I can see, it's always difficult to get very detailed pollinator information because pollination research is quite hard. But this seems to be quite a generalist anthurium that's pollinated by bees, flies, beetles, weevils and the like. And I did read up some interesting stuff about anthurium pollination.
[5:52] I'll put the link in the show notes to this piece, but it was talking about some research showing that anthuriums, tend to flower at the same time in the same area. So if you've got an area of forest and you might have a dozen Anthurium species, they'll usually kick into blooming at the same moment. So it's kind of a bit of a festival for all the pollinators that want to come in and are attracted to the various smells of the Anthurium species, which apparently vary from vomit. I mean, not the kind smell I'm attracted to but I'm not a pollinator and also.
[6:30] Blueberry and marzipan so there you go native, wild anthuriums can offer up all kinds of scents so yeah I mean what an amazing thing if you could ever get to the forests of Colombia or Ecuador look out for flowering anthuriums with their incredible inflorescences and you may not be disappointed but back to caring for this plant so yes it's going to be living in a tree in nature so in that regard the substrate needs to be chunky so don't put it in a very heavy mix with no drainage material added you want to add things like fine orchid bark expanded clay pebbles.
[7:14] Some mineral substrates like pumice would be good, shove those in there and then just adjust your watering to make sure that the plant isn't allowed to dry out too much but yeah it will do fine in, as I say yeah it doesn't need a particularly fancy amount of care if you've got some aroid mix that'll be fine if you've got some mix that you've used for other epiphytes that will also be fine, good drainage is very important, but other than that they don't need a lot of care and attention they will just keep on throwing out flowers. If it isn't flowering then I would say take it to a window and get it some more light because that's most likely the problem with this plant.
[7:57] And if I've inspired you to pick one of these up, it's worth saying that the breeders have gone a bit wild on this one. And there are now an array of different Anthurium andrianum cultivars to collect. The Spath and Spadix can come in a wide range of colours. Anything from the classic bright red, which is what I love. Hot pink, purple, white, if you want to be classy. Even like almost black there's one called Paris black which is this really really dark purple spade and spadix which I have to say is rather attractive and I'm wanting to own one of those, there's a few purpley ones out there as well and of course because you know breeders gonna breed there are also ones with variegated spades and variegated leaves if such a thing is your bag.
[8:54] Look around and see what's out there as I say the classic red I don't think I can, fault that as a Christmas plant but if I'm going to be branching out into something to suit my decor I might want to go for a classic white although I think that's probably the, most boring choice of all there's one called white champion if you like white uh hot pink never a bad decision.
[9:18] Uh so go out there and have a look at what's out there and if you buy this plant and give it pretty minimal care it will be with you for years and years and years so it's such a good flowering plant I love it you should love it too and yeah I hope that you enjoy growing this one final note for pet owners this one like so many aroids is toxic for pets so if you have the odd nibbler in your house this is one to keep well out of their way, well that's it for today and I'll be back tomorrow with another flowering houseplant for you to enjoy so do, join me then oh and by the way if you don't want to listen to all of these short individual episodes I will be putting out the whole week as a single episode at the end of the week so come back for that if that's what you're after, have a great week with your plants. See you later.
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CREDITS
This week's show featured Whistle by BenJamin Banger (@benjaminbanger on Insta; website benjaminbanger.com) and The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku.