List: Houseplants With Large, Broad Leaves

This is a particularly fun category for me to contemplate, because I really like plants with big honking leaves. Always have. So for this list, I went around the house and measured the biggest leaves on some of my plants, to see how everything measured up. Because it was fun.¹

Some explanations and disclaimers:

The plants listed with photos below are plants I personally own, along with the measurements of the largest leaves from each. The photos are old ones, some of which were taken a long time before I measured the plants this week, and consequently may or may not show leaves the size I'm talking about.

Some of the plants in the "not pictured" list can produce considerably larger leaves than the ones with photos. Some of the plants that have photos are capable of much larger leaves than my personal plants have given me: they're not under ideal tropical conditions like they would prefer, and it stunts them a bit.


Anthurium "hookeri"² (27 x 9.5 in / 69 x 24 cm) This is more of a cry for help than anything else; I suspect the large leaves are the plant's way of telling me that it would like more light than it's receiving. However, a big leaf is a big leaf, and this definitely counts. The biggest leaf on this plant is the second largest leaf in the house (measured as leaf length times leaf width).


Anthurium andraeanum cvv. (some cvv.) (10.5 x 6 in / 27 x 15.5 cm) I've seen larger on greenhouse-grown (or Florida-grown) plants, but this is still pretty good, for plants that have been indoors for a long time. Look for plants with heart-shaped leaves and flowers; they tend to be larger than the varieties with more elliptical or lens-shaped leaves.


Asplundia 'Jungle Drum' (21 x 12 in / 53 x 30 cm) This plant gets third place at the moment, for biggest leaves in the house, though each new leaf seems to be larger than the one before, so I think it may have the ability to get first place eventually. I've seen few photos of a mature Asplundia, so I'm not sure what this is capable of.


Cordyline fruticosa (18.5 x 4.5 in / 47 x 11.5 cm) The plant in the photo has had some tough times since. It's had spider mites pretty bad (it seems to have them all the time), and then this spring it started to drop a lot of leaves for no obvious reason. I've moved it outside, and it seems to be getting better, but the new leaves are still not coming in quite as big as they used to. Most varieties will produce very large leaves, though a few will not.


Dieffenbachia cvv. (16.5 x 8.5 in / 42 x 22 cm) The photo is of 'Tropic Rain,' though in the house at the moment, 'Tropic Snow' is actually the Dieffenbachia with the largest leaf -- it's only half a centimeter longer than 'Tropic Rain,' but it's 4.5 cm wider. Both big, though.


Ficus lyrata (10.5 x 7 in / 26.5 x 17.5 cm) Ten and a half inches long is not really even close to the full big-leaf potential of Ficus lyrata, but it's the best mine is doing at the moment. Compared to, like, a Peperomia or something, that's still plenty huge.


Monstera deliciosa (12 x 9.5 in / 31 x 24 cm) My plain green Monstera has never really lived up to its potential, which I don't entirely understand, but 'Cheesecake' is pretty impressive already, and this isn't even close to the maximum possible leaf size. (For an idea about the maximum possible size, see this post at Life Among the Leaves.)


Philodendron 'Spicy Dog' (15.5 x 9.5 in / 40 x 24 cm) It remains to be seen how well 'Spicy Dog' is going to work indoors -- some Philodendrons like me a lot, and some don't -- but it's certainly got big leaves. And so far, it's behaving quite well, so I'm hopeful that there will be bigger leaves than this eventually.


Spathiphyllum cvv. (some cvv.) (20.5 x 8.5 in / 52 x 21 cm) This is probably quite a ways short of the plant's potential. We got a Spathiphyllum in at work once that was a good five feet tall. The leaves had to have been at least 30 inches (76 cm) long. I took a picture, but it didn't turn out well.


Strelitzia nicolai (20.5 x 13 in / 52 x 33 cm) In the house right now, Strelitzia nicolai has the single largest leaf, and 20.5 inches is actually nowhere near the plant's potential. If you want a plant with big leaves, this is your guy right here.

Honorable mentions:
Some compound leaves may still be very large, even if the individual leaflets never get huge. If my Schefflera actinophylla's leaves were solid, instead of divided into leaflets, it would actually beat Strelitzia nicolai in total leaf area. Tetrastigma voinierianum would also be competitive under those circumstances.

I also left out Philodendron bipinnatifidum, Radermachera sinica, Nephrolepis exaltata, Polyscias fruticosa, Zamioculcas zamiifolia, and palms (like Hyophorbe verschaffeltii, Chrysalidocarpus lutescens, or Chamaedorea cataractum), because although the leaves on all of these can become very large, they're also divided.³ Therefore, they look and function more like a large number of small, narrow leaves than they do like single large, broad leaves, even if they are, botanically speaking, single leaves with a lot of surface area. I'm looking at this list more from an interior-decorating angle than a botanical, what-technically-qualifies-as-a-leaf one, because I'm assuming that anybody searching for a list like this on-line is going to be more interested in the look than the botany.

Selenicereus chrysocardium is capable of producing very large stem segments, big enough that, again, were they actual leaves, and solid, my Selenicereus would outrank every plant on the above list in leaf area except for Strelitzia nicolai. However, they're not actual leaves, and they're not solid, so Selenicereus doesn't make the list.

Now, recommendations. The three plants from the above list that I think give the best balance between having huge leaves and easy care would be Spathiphyllum, Asplundia, and Strelitzia. Strelitzia does need good, bright light to do well, though. Asplundia tend to be sold as small plants (I've seen them in 4" and 6" pots here), and take some time to develop the truly huge leaves I'm talking about, but mine has only been in my care for three years, and even though it was tiny when I got it, it's a monster now. So it's not that long of a wait, really. Not all Spathiphyllum varieties are capable of getting to be large; the varieties 'Mauna Loa' and 'Sensation' are the two most common huge varieties. I don't know which I have, but I believe the five-foot one I talked about earlier was 'Sensation.'

For the anti-recommend, I'll go with Anthurium "hookeri." Not that hard to keep alive, but the huge leaves tear easily, and it just looks funny, having the new leaves come in huge like that, when the older leaves are darker, thicker, tougher, and smaller. If I really loved it and wanted it to be happy, I'd let it summer outside. Though it'd just burn. And then the wind would rip the leaves to pieces. So maybe it's more loving to keep it inside. I don't even know anymore.

Not pictured:

Aglaonema cvv.: the leaves tend not to be as big as some on the list, but they'll produce them even in fairly crappy conditions. 'Emerald Bay,' 'Brilliant,' 'Gold Dust,' and 'Silverado' are all potentially quite large.
Alocasia 'Frydek:' it's not easy to grow Alocasias indoors, but 'Frydek' has good-sized leaves when it's happy.
Alocasia amazonica 'Polly:' same as above.
Alocasia melo: I don't know for sure if this one even can be grown indoors, but the leaves are wicked cool.
Anthurium crystallinum 'Mehani:' dry air and/or soil will cause tears and gaps in developing leaves. Doable, but somewhat difficult.
Some Begonia species produce large leaves, though difficulty varies a lot from one variety to the next.
Calathea ornata, roseo-picta, rotundifolia, etc.: Calatheas are demanding, but they're gorgeous plants, with large, oval leaves.
Chamaedorea metallica: As for Aglaonema, the leaves are not huge huge, but they're bigger than average, and the plants are easy to grow.
Codiaeum variegatum: Leaf size varies a lot with the cultivar and the conditions in which it's being grown, but there are some varieties out there with respectably large leaves. Also not the easiest plant for indoors.
Colocasia cvv.: As with Alocasia, they're not easy, though certain Colocasia are capable of monstrous leaves.
Epipremnum aureum: I debated whether to add this species. They're capable of growing very large, Monstera-like leaves, if in warm, humid conditions and given something to climb. This is fairly difficult to pull off in the home, though, and plants being grown indoors year-round, even if they have large, split leaves when purchased, will usually revert to small, juvenile leaves inside. This is not to say it can't be done, just that you should probably not buy one with the idea that it's going to give you big huge split leaves eventually.
Eucharis grandiflora: I'm not sure what I think about these as indoor plants -- my plant and I have gone through good and bad spells -- but the leaves can get large in good conditions, and people can grow them indoors quite successfully. (See e.g. this post at Our Little Acre.)
Ficus elastica: A pretty obvious, but solid, option. Plants will grow larger leaves if they're not getting as much light as they'd like.
Homalomena 'Perma Press:' These plants get enormous, but the leaves stay in proportion to the rest of the plant, at least. I have a small one that's currently having a growth spurt, which has been fairly unproblematic as long as I didn't let it dry out.
Homalomena 'Selby:' Similar in size and shape to some of the medium-sized Dieffenbachias. They're terrifying if allowed to get too dry, which makes them not a good plant to grow if you're prone to panic,⁴ but if you can keep up with the watering, it might be okay.
Musa spp. (and Ensete spp.): Ornamental bananas are hard indoors -- they don't handle dry soil or air well, and they're (in my experience) very prone to spider mites too. They're also one of the few plants that can compete with Colocasia and Strelitzia on leaf size.
Phalaenopsis cvv.: As with Epipremnum, Phalaenopsis can sometimes have very large leaves when you first buy them, but a plant being grown indoors, unless your whole life is going to revolve around it or you have a perfect outdoor spot for it during the summer, is not likely to get huge. Not that huge is really the point with Phalaenopsis.
Philodendron 'Autumn,' 'Moonlight,' 'Prince of Orange:' Leaf size in Philodendrons has a lot to do with conditions. They're easy to keep alive, but if you want big leaves, you need to provide warm, humid conditions and a lot of light.
Philodendron 'Congo Green,' 'Congo Red:' as for 'Autumn.' 'Congo Green' strongly resembles a young Strelitzia nicolai but doesn't get anywhere near as big when mature.
Philodendron 'Florida Beauty:' I've never had one of these, but want one. I would guess that the situation is basically the same as for 'Autumn.'
Philodendron 'Imperial Green,' 'Imperial Red:' as for 'Autumn,' but, like, a lot more so.
Philodendron erubescens 'Red Emerald:' as for 'Autumn.'
Philodendron gloriosum: The leaves on my plant have been fairly decently-sized the whole time I've had it, though if I went back and looked at the pictures again, I would probably find that the leaves are smaller than they used to be. Still, it's not as drastic of a difference as for some of the other Philodendron species on the list. It's also more susceptible to spider mites, and has sort of an annoying growth habit.⁵
Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Kong' series ('Kong Mosaic,' 'Kong Rose,' etc.): I've pretty much given up on trying to keep coleus of any kind going indoors, but it can be done if you really, really want to.
Strelitzia reginae never grows leaves as big as S. nicolai, but they're still substantial.

I'm sure I've left things out, so hit me with any suggestions that come to mind.

-

¹ (I have very low standards for "fun.")
² I call it Anthurium "hookeri" because it was sold to me as A. hookeri, but almost certainly isn't: "hookeri" is a common name for Anthurium hybrids of unknown origin. Since it's the only name I have for the plant, I still use it, but "hookeri" is most likely wrong, and it's not a cultivar name either, therefore double quote marks.
³ Philodendron 'Spicy Dog,' which I suspect of being a cultivar of P. bipinnatifidum, is allowed on the list because its leaves aren't pinnate like bipinnatifidum's are.
⁴ And possibly not a great plant even if you aren't -- I've never seen an old 'Selby,' and I have to wonder why that is.
⁵ It looks like it would be a climber, but Philodendron gloriosum is actually a crawler. It doesn't produce enough leaves to be good in a hanging basket, and it's hard to repot. The thick, inflexible stems basically hit the edge of the pot and make a right angle straight downward, which means that if you want to repot one, you pretty much have to cut all the stems back in order to do it. I've been waiting for the courage to do this to my plant for a good year or more now.

Pretty picture: Pleurothallis truncata

Occasionally, with the orchids, one is moved to ask what is the point. I mean, I guess the color's nice, if you can see it.


Google tells me that the species lives high in the mountains of Columbia and Ecuador, and prefers cooler temperatures and lots of moisture. Presumably the pollinators at those altitudes are so hard up for flowers that they have no standards, hence the tiny orange things here.

The above is, in any case, about as pretty as the pictures get. In the googling, I found a few photos that were maybe more dramatic, or more professional-looking, but the flowers themselves pretty much always look like this.

Question for the Hive Mind: Schlumbergera

It's bad enough that one of my Schlumbergeras (the pink one) has decided to disintegrate completely, following what was apparently a badly-timed repotting (though the peach/salmon one was repotted at the same time, and seems really happy about the repotting, putting out new growth for the first time in forever), but 'Caribbean Dancer' isn't looking so good either, all of a sudden:


Prior to this, I had no idea that Schlumbergeras even could look water-soaked like this, much less water-soaked and . . . lumpy?

To the best of my knowledge, nothing in the plant's life had changed. I was watering the same way, and at the same times, the temperature range was as close to the same as is possible in the house, it had not been repotted, it hadn't been moved, it hadn't been sprayed with anything, it hadn't been handled or spoken to in a harsh manner. And yet. The afflicted portions of the plant are all on the same side of the plant, which suggests that it's not random, but beyond that, I have no idea. Anybody have any guesses?


Incidentally, Schlumbergera cvv. won the vote during the hiatus, so it will be the next plant profile (UPDATE: Profile has been written and can be found here.), with Aloe vera and Ficus elastica following, in that order. I have no idea how long this will take to do, but regular readers will know not to hold their breath.

(UPDATE: I had to postpone the Ficus elastica profile for several months, but it has now been written.)

Walkaway: Codiaeum variegatum 'Revolutions'

I am having a serious headache right now (Saturday night), for the second night in a row. Consequently, I have to phone it in today. On the plus side, the internet situation appears to be resolved, so if I ever do have a night where I don't have a headache, I should be able to write and save posts again. That should be a welcome change from writing posts but not being able to save them because the internet has vanished.

Anyway. This is a Codiaeum variegatum that I hadn't seen before. I wasn't even remotely tempted to buy it, because, you know, it's a Codiaeum variegatum, and also I think it's kind of ugly (if only the people coming up with these new croton varieties could be persuaded to use their powers for good, rather than evil!), but it's certainly different.


My first reaction, upon seeing it, was . . . well, actually, my first reaction would have been I have to get a picture of that for the blog! But my second reaction was to imagine how hard it would be to get spider mites off of one, with all those half-folded leaves for them to take shelter in. Or mealybugs either, as far as it goes. No, thank you.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Internet access difficulties continue. This is a photo of Sheba in a field of alfalfa (Medicago sativa).

UPDATE: Well, maybe they continue. We FINALLY got someone to come check things out on Friday afternoon, and the solution was to add a separate line strictly for the internet (previously the phone and internet had been sharing the same line, is my understanding). So it might be that my long intermittent-connection nightmare is finally over. Or maybe it's not. Time will tell.

Still Life With Peperomia Ferreyrae

I enjoyed having some time off from the blog, though the time was not necessarily wonderful. We still don't have, as of Thursday morning, a consistent internet connection, though the husband did finally convince Iowa Telcom to agree to send a technician out to look at the situation, after three weeks of calling them about it. When are they sending him/r? We do not know. Will s/he let us know s/he's coming? Maybe. Apparently it's all contingent on whatever his/r other assignments are, which makes me think that perhaps Iowa Telcom only employs one technician for all their thousands (?) of customers. (This could explain why they were so reluctant to send one.)

So there's that.

Also, on Wednesday, we had a Tornado Warning, which used to mean that an actual tornado was spotted somewhere in the vicinity by a responsible and mostly sober adult, but now they'll issue Warnings if the echo from the Doppler radar looks a certain way. This is probably a good thing, in that they can get people's attention and give them more time to get to shelter, but it also leads to a lot of false positives that will sooner or later cause people not to take the Warnings seriously. I suspect this was a false positive. We did get a little bit of pea-sized hail, though. I like storms, though I would have enjoyed this more had the husband been home for it, though. (He was in Iowa City.)

Sheba had never been downstairs before, and didn't want to go, so I had to carry her down. I got the impression that she was disappointed with the basement, that she'd imagined something much cooler. Perhaps I'm projecting.

So nothing especially "severe" happened. The lower spots in the back yard are now under about three inches of standing water, but that's been true for days. It's so wet our grass is growing fungus.



Meanwhile, I took up painting:

View full-size if you want to see the brushwork. UPDATE: Is not really a painting. My graphics program, Irfanview, has an "Oil Paint" effect setting. I thought it would be more obvious that the image was a fake than was apparently the case. Apologies.
I don't know what brought this on. It didn't make much sense at the time, either. I remember noticing that the Peperomia had new growth on it (it was just a cutting three months ago), and that some of the leaves were bigger than the leaves on the parent plant . . . and then, it would appear, I blacked out, grabbed a few random items, and took some pictures.

The skull is plastic. I have an aunt who worked (briefly) for a place that made plastic model skeletons, and the skull was the "wrong" color. She thought I might want it, so I've had it for about fifteen years. We do not have actual human skulls laying around the house. That I know of.

PATSP Hiatus

Summer hiatus this year is exceptionally well-timed; we've been having post-ISP-switching problems where the line into the house is not able to carry as much information as I am capable of requesting. So, periodically, the line throws a tantrum and then I can't load any pages at all. And there appear to be other problems as well. Which is all really annoying.

We're going to get it fixed. In theory. I hope. Maybe even during the next four days, cross your fingers. But if I don't respond to e-mails or comments as much as usual (not that I'm that great about it usually, but, you know, if I'm suddenly much worse), blame my internet problems.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be gathering information for the next few plant profiles, because it seems to work so much better if I gather, then organize, then write (as I did for the Ananas comosus profile), instead of trying to do all three simultaneously (as I usually do). I don't have any especially strong feelings about which plant to write about next, but there are five strong contenders, so if you're especially interested in one of them, let me know through the below poll. It will remain open through Saturday.




See you again Friday.

Carmen Miranda (Ananas comosus), Part II

(This is Part II of the Ananas comosus profile, which covers how to grow one indoors. For historical, botanical, cultural, and scientific information about this plant, plus some statistically better-than-average jokes, see Part I.)

I've attempted to grow Ananas indoors three times, and only one has worked out at all. The one that worked out was a cultivar called 'Mongo,'¹ which we got in where I used to work, a couple years ago when I still worked there. 'Mongo' offset prolifically --


-- so we took a bunch of the more promising offsets and planted them in three-inch pots. Something like 95% of them rooted and took off, and I wound up with one, which I've had for about a year and a half now. So I do okay with pineapple plants when they're already established.

The plant in question.
Trying to start brand-new plants on my own, though, has been tougher. Both times, I've started from a pineapple fruit from the supermarket, and both times I've failed, though in opposite directions. The first time, I think I kept it too dry, besides also being impatient at how slowly it was rooting; the second time, I think I had overpotted it, so it was too wet, and I was so unimpatient with it that I forgot it existed for a couple weeks, by which time the base had rotted to pieces.

So I guess the first care tip is that if you have the choice, try to start out with a plant that's already rooted and established. But otherwise:

LIGHT: The recommendations on light were unanimous: pineapples need to have full sun, for as long as possible. Without enough light, plants will be too depressed to flower,² the leaves will be smaller and narrower, and growth will be either very slow or nonexistent.

Outdoors, you have a little bit of a choice; one site suggested that the foliage (in cases where Ananas are being grown for their foliage) might actually be more attractive in a partial-shade spot, as opposed to full sun. If you're growing the plant for the fruit, full sun is still best, accept no substitutes, full stop.

Picture of a pineapple fruit. Photo by MANOJTV at Wikimedia Commons page for pineapple.
WATER: On the other hand, no two people agree on pretty much anything else related to pineapple-growing. With my own plant, the 'Mongo,' I do pretty much the same thing I do for all the other plants: I let it get mostly dry, then drench it, then let it dry out again until it's mostly dry. This seems to work well enough. The impression I get is that they're fairly flexible on watering; more than one site commented on their drought-tolerance. I'd err on the dry side, as keeping your plant too wet will, of course, cause it to rot and die.

Plants being started from the tops of pineapple fruits are especially susceptible to overwatering until they have established roots throughout the soil in their pot. It may be best in these cases to water the way most people do (in small amounts but frequently), instead of the way I usually do (in large amounts at long intervals), until the plant is established.

TEMPERATURE: Again, depends who you ask. If you want fruit, people recommend keeping the temperature warm. Different people define "warm" in different ways, but on average, people say 65F (18C) or above at all times.³ It also appears to help if the temperature doesn't swing back and forth a lot: more than one site advised maintaining steady or nearly-steady temperatures.

The actual point where it's cold enough to kill a plant seems to depend a lot on the variety of plant and the length of time involved; a number of people report their plants surviving brief light freezes (to around 28F/-2C). Cosmetically, this is probably a bad idea -- the plants' growth will slow, and leaf tips will probably die back, and it could take a long time for it to look respectable again. So don't do that.

This plant wasn't exposed to cold that I know of, but it might have been, and even if it wasn't, this is what it looks like.
HUMIDITY: High humidity is preferred, especially if you're expecting fruit, but they'll roll with lower humidity, within reason.

PESTS: The main problems commercially are fungal, viral, and bacterial, and don't have a lot to do with the usual indoor plant pests. That said, the viral diseases (mostly pineapple mealybug wilt-associated virus, which is probably technically several different viruses) are transmitted from plant to plant by mealybugs, which means mealybugs are possible. I also read that scale is sometimes a problem. As far as I'm aware, aphids, spider mites, thrips, etc. are not significant pests of Ananas.

PROPAGATION: If you begin with a mature plant, offsets should begin to form around the base of the plant before the fruit is even ripe. This works just like with other offsetting bromeliads like Guzmania or Neoregelia; new plants emerge from buds between the outermost leaves and the center of the plant. These can be removed when they're about 2/3 as tall as the parent and potted up on their own; rooting is, as you'd expect, most likely in full sun, warm and humid air, and with moderately moist but airy, fast-draining soil.

Sometimes, the fruits will also grow multiple offsets, as in the first photo above, or this fruit that's offsetting from its base:

Ananas comosus with an offset growing from the base of the fruit. Photo by Whaldener Endo at the Wikipedia page for pineapple.
You never see multiple tops on the fruit in the grocery store, which I can't explain; I've also never seen offsetting from the base of the fruit, like in the picture above. Maybe only ornamental plants do these things, maybe commercial pineapples are discouraged from it somehow, maybe it just doesn't happen very often. I'm not sure. But for propagation, they work the same way. Most of the plants we had at work came from the top of the one fruit in the first photo; 'Mongo' didn't offset a lot from the bases of the parent plants.

Supposedly, according to Floridata, after fruit is harvested from a plant, the stem the fruit sits on is also capable of producing new plants. All the page really says is to strip the stem of leaves, cut it into pieces, and plant the pieces, which is not really specific enough to get a very clear idea of what to do, but what the hell, if you have a stem there anyway, you might as well experiment and see what happens.

Propagation from seeds is theoretically possible, but it's not practical for a non-professional to do inside his/r home, and it's hard to get seeds in the first place, so we'll skip that.

If you're starting out with a store-bought fruit instead of offsets, things are a little more complicated, but people still do it all the time, so take heart. The first step is to remove the rosette of leaves from the fruit, and there are two basic ways of doing this: one can cut the top inch of fruit off, or one can twist the leaves one way and the fruit the other way until the leaves come out on their own. Both are pretty easy to do; I favor the twist method because it's a better set-up for the next step.

And what is the next step? If you plant the pineapple top directly, it will likely just rot, because of the fruit that's still attached to it. So you have to clean it up a bit, to reduce the chances of rot. Cut or pull away as much of the attached fruit as you can; you might also want to leave the top in a bright, sunless spot for a couple days to permit the base to dry.

Fruit I bought last week while working on these Ananas posts. If this attempt doesn't work, then I may have to accept that I don't have what it takes, but the other attempts were before I had harnessed the awesome power of RESEARCH, so I'm hopeful.
The third step is to remove some of the leaves. The new roots are going to emerge from the hard center of the plant, just above where the leaves are attached, and obviously they're not going to accomplish anything if they emerge and then find a leaf is in the way. Therefore, you want to pull a number of leaves from the bottom. The two most common rules of thumb are 1) to pull four layers of leaves away, or 2) to pull leaves away until you're left with about 1-1.5 inches (2.5-3.8 cm) of bare stem at the bottom. Whichever. (It will probably wind up roughly the same either way.) You will probably be able to see tiny white roots already on the stem when you do this.

Fourth comes rooting the top. Some root it in water first and then transfer to soil, and others start out in soil from the very beginning. I think the next time I try this (very soon -- we bought a pineapple while I was writing these posts), I want to try starting in water first, because starting in soil right off the bat doesn't seem to be working for me. However, if you have a semi-protected spot outdoors⁴ and a long growing season ahead of you, with pineapple-friendly temperatures, it might be fine to start outside in a pot. Use a potting mix that will drain quickly. Bagged cactus and succulent mixes are usually decent, though a good all-purpose mix with some aquatic soil or clean, coarse sand⁵ added might be better if you can swing it. If, on the other hand, you begin by rooting in water, you don't have to worry about soil quality immediately, though maintaining an appropriate water level (high enough to cover the roots you're trying to grow, but not so deep that it covers the crown of the plant) may be hard to keep up with, if the container is very small. One ingenious commenter at Davesgarden.com recommends using a bulb-forcing vase, like those used to force hyacinths in winter, which are about the right size to be able to keep a pineapple top in place without having to worry about the water level getting too high and rotting the crown. Try to change the water daily until decent-sized⁶ roots have formed, at which point you can plant it in the aforementioned fast-draining potting mix. If you're intending to grow your plant indoors, a smaller pot (4-5 inches / 10-13 cm) is probably better than a large one; if your plant is going to be outside for a while, a larger pot might need less frequent watering.

Flowering and fruiting take a while, especially in low light, cool temperatures, or cramped pots, but in ideal conditions you may have something happen around 18-24 months. If the fruit is removed, plants can fruit repeatedly, though commercially-grown pineapples are retired after 3-5 years, because successive fruits tend to be smaller and smaller, as plants age.


FEEDING: The usual recommendation is for a normal houseplant fertilizer at half-strength once a month, or quarter-strength every two weeks. You can skip this if the plant is in low light, or if it doesn't seem to be growing actively. My plant gets time-release fertilizer when I remember to feed it, which works out, I'm sure, to a lot less than the recommendation, but it would also prefer to be getting a lot more light than it does, and it's due for a repotting, so this sort of evens out.

GROOMING: Like other bromeliads, plants offset and die after flowering, but this doesn't happen immediately, and by the time it does, there are offsets there to replace it. Some other sites make it sound like everything happens all at once, really fast, and that isn't so.

Homegrown pineapple fruit, unless you live somewhere really tropical, are unlikely to be as large or as sweet as store-bought ones. Some of the ornamental variegated plants' fruits are too small or too sour to count as edible at all. Just so you know.

Variegated Ananas comosus. Photo by Louise Wolff, from the Wikimedia Commons page for Ananas comosus.
Actual grooming is fairly minimal: as for most bromeliads, it's pretty much limited to pulling off the occasional dead leaf. Which is not trivial, if your plant is large and spiny, but you probably won't have to do it very often.

Pineapple plants can get fairly large, even if they're in containers and indoors. It's maybe not typical, but it does happen. This specimen (belonging to Megan of Far Out Flora) was grown primarily indoors, and looks scary large:⁷

Large container-grown specimen of Ananas comosus. Photo by Megan at Far Out Flora. Used by permission.
Most of the time, Ananas comosus is more of a novelty houseplant than a serious ornamental, grown less because anybody really wants one than because they're relatively easy to start, and sometimes one winds up with a pineapple top and doesn't want to throw it away.⁸ The variegated cultivars, on the other hand, are fairly decorative in their own right, even when not flowering, and I'm a little surprised that they're not available more often.⁹

In short, Ananas comosus is somewhat difficult indoors, mainly in that it needs a tremendous amount of light to really thrive, and it can be difficult to get a plant started in the first place. On the other hand, learn enough pineapple recipes, and you'll have a never-ending supply of opportunities.

Almost makes a person want to be a slow learner, eh?

Pages consulted for this post, though not necessarily used:

• Plantoftheweek.org
• Davesgarden.com profile
• Mobot.org page for Ananas comosus var. variegatus
• Recommended: Water Roots profile of Ananas comosus
• Herself's Houston Garden
• Plantcare.com
• (plus some of the sites listed in the bibliography for Part I)

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Photo credits: my own, except as otherwise credited.

¹ I was unable to find anything that identified 'Mongo' as to species; everybody just calls it 'Mongo.' It's most likely A. comosus, A. bracteatus, A. nanus, or a hybrid between two of those.
² I know. Just roll with it, okay?
³ The actual suggestions: 68, 65, 60, 75, 60, 50 (F), which average out to 63F. Translated into metric, that's 20, 18, 16, 24, 16, and 10, with an average of 17C.
⁴ Semi-protected because you don't want the wind knocking your plant out of its pot before it gets a chance to root, and also because rabbits will eat the leaves, given the opportunity. I have proof:


⁵ Not fine sand. If the sand is too fine, it will compact around the roots over time, cutting off air. Coarse sand will do this too, to a degree, but larger particles don't pack together as efficiently, so you'll maintain a looser soil texture for a longer period.
⁶ Use your own judgment, but I'd say 2-4 inches (5-10 cm) is probably good enough to be potted up. Of course, I've failed at this every time I've tried it so far, so I don't know why you're listening to me in the first place.
⁷ Sadly, I am informed that the plant in the photo is no longer among us, having outgrown its indoor spot and moved outside. I don't have a good theory about why this happened, and as far as I know Matti and Megan don't either. If forced to guess, I'd want to know what sort of temperatures it was experiencing when it kicked, this being the only thing I can think of that could have gone wrong in San Francisco.
⁸ This also happens with avocados (Persea americana). People used to grow oranges, lemons, and other citrus fruit from seeds found in fruit, but I don't see people talking about it so much anymore. It may be that citrus seeds are harder to come by, now that seedless varieties are available for some species. Ginger (Zingiber officinale) and pomegranates (Punica granatum) are also occasionally done, but I would guess that they must not make especially satisfactory indoor plants or you'd hear more about it. (I've never spoken to anyone who said they'd personally grown ginger. I have talked, once, to a person who said she had an indoor pomegranate, but the context was that they'd called to ask us for help, because it was having problems. Which makes me think it may be uncommon because it doesn't usually work.)
⁹ For some bizarre reason, bromeliads are a tough sell to begin with. I don't understand why this is, but we had trouble selling them at work, or even getting anybody interested. When people were interested, they usually only listened until I got to the "and then after they flower, the main plant dies and produces offsets" part, after which they wanted to move on to look at something else. Doesn't matter that the dying might take two years or that the plant will produce its own replacements; once people hear "dies" it's all over, from a sales standpoint. Perhaps I should have been saying "dormant" or "sleepy" or something.