House Plants

Everyone in our family has always liked houseplants. Houseplants are plants that do well in the house. Many of the plants commonly seen outdoors don't do well in the house, and many houseplants won't do well outside but there are the exceptions as some do well both places. I got my love of plants from my mom and my grandmothers. My dad liked them but wouldn't have cared for them if Mom didn't. I was able to get some jobs in plant nurseries were I learned more about houseplants. I have always had some. At times there have been lots of plants and at other times only a few. Recently my sister came for a short visit and brought several big plants that she had been caring for since our mom passed away. One of them is the big Ponytail Palm or Elephant Foot Tree shown in the first photo. I remember when my uncle gave it to my mom and it wasn't more than 6 inches tall. That was about 35 years ago. Now it is about 6 feet tall. These plants originally come from a desert in Mexico so do well as houseplants since they don't need very much water. In fact they only need water about once a month. Its probably one of the easiest plants to care for as long as you don't over water it. If you do it will rot and die. When I looked on the internet I found it is difficult to start baby plants and it takes a male and a female to bloom and make seed. I don't know which this one is. I did see some photos that made this one look tiny.

Another plant she had that was Mom's is the euphoria shown in the last photo. This does have thrones on the edges of the almost 3 sided stalks but it is a succlent as it has a few leaves along those same edges. It, too, wants to be very dry, but it does stick if not careful and if handled wrong does have a white sap that leaks from it that can be irriting to some peoples skin. It is sometimes called a Milk Tree because of the white sap. But it not milk as we think of it. This plant, too, is about 35 years old. It is easy to take cutting from this one to make more plants.