The Perfect Gift? Try a Houseplant!

Maritta Perry Grau
Frederick County Master Gardener

(12/1) Now that it’s too cold to sit outside, social distancing with friends and extended family members (so hard when the Old Coach and I have one son and family across the street and one just two doors down!), how can we let them know we’re thinking of them?

How about an easy-care house plant or dish of succulents, assuming the family pets will leave said plants alone? The University of Maryland Extension Service has many recommendations. In case a potted plant or dish garden is on your mind, here are just a few that UMD recommends, from easy-care to finicky.

1. Don’t have a green thumb? No problem. The UMD Extension Service calls the well-named Snake plant (Sansevieria) "the toughest plant on the planet." Well-named, indeed: I have had a small Sansevieria growing in a dish garden for about 10 years. For some reason, one of its blades has grown with a bend that reminds me of a cobra stretching up out of its basket. And tough, indeed: I once put a pot of Sansevieria on the sheltered front porch of our former home in Annapolis and left it there, totally neglected, all winter. It did not die.
    
2. Dracaena, with colorful, striped or patterned foliage, usually darker green and chartreuse stripes or a purplish stripe, is a large, easy-care plant. Often, Dracaenas like a somewhat dry soil.
    
3. Another easy-care plant is the ZZ, or Zamioculcas. According to Wikipedia, "Zamioculcas is…in the family Araceae, containing the single species Zamioculcas zamiifolia. It is a tropical perennial plant native to eastern Africa, from southern Kenya to northeastern South Africa."
    
4. 4. If you’re looking for color, Dracaena, mentioned above, and Bromeliads are good choices. Water bromeliads by pouring water into the "cup" formed by their leaves; they will tolerate low light for a long time, although they much prefer bright lights. So, if you want to brighten up a windowless room, such as a bathroom, you might rotate a Bromeliad with other low light-tolerant plants, giving them longer turns in bright-light rooms, and shorter times in darker rooms.
    
5. Chinese Evergreen (Aglaonema) has broad foliage, which grows from a central stem, is usually silver or gray-green, sometimes mottled with a mauve splotchiness or a mauve stripe, bringing some subtle color to the room it’s in. The UMD extension service warns that "old plants develop tall stems [which] should be cut back to promote more compact growth."
    
6. Sometimes foliage plants, bought primarily for their shades of green, can surprise you. A dish garden I received in 2009 included a small Hoya vine with thick, leathery, pointed and speckled, dark green leaves. Although it’s always been in the same brightly lit window, only this year did it bloom—and did so several times—magnificent tight clusters of waxy, delicate, star-shaped pale pink flowers, each star with a second, smaller star on top, and a dark pink center that feathered into the pale pink. And even the tiny brown seed pods that were left when the Hoya finished blooming were pretty—I will spray some of them gold and use them with pinecones and other dried materials to decorate Christmas presents.
    
7. Succulents or cacti are easy to grow, have many species in a huge variety of shapes, colors, and sizes, and host very few pest or disease problems. They generally do well in south-facing windows, especially if they have good drainage and the soil dries between waterings.

Colin Skelly, horticulturist for the fabulous Eden Project in Cornwall, UK notes that "…light and water…can have dramatic effects on a succulent’s colour. In winter, they are quite green, but as light levels increase, coloured forms take on their darker tones. When stressed by lack of water, even green succulents take on red, pink and yellow tints. Often this is when they look most dazzling…one of the delights of growing succulents…"

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