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Comment by thephyber | Hacker News Reader

sarcasm?

It's tough to take care of a human infant or a puppy. It's extremely easy to care for a fish or a plant.

Then again, some people can't even be responsible for themselves.

No, it was genuinely stressful! I forget the name of the plant now, but too much sun and it would die. Too little sun, same result. Move it the wrong way and, yep you guessed it, death. And that's before we even get to the watering requirements!

You sure your friends weren't joking? This sounds like a "ask for tartan paint" style joke that get's played on interns/apprentices.

It sounds like many plants that are not common house plants, actually. The first that comes to my mind is cacao, for example, or many orchids too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiyfwZVAzGw

We have one plant in our household, no other plants have survived. It lives in my living room and I have no idea what kind of plant it is. It had long thin leaves, each one is about 10 to 15cm long and 1cm wide and long thin woody stems.

We water it randomly, at one stage we estimate we forgot to water it for around 6 months. Other times due to a lack of communication we have both watered it multiple times in a week. It appears to be invulnerable to poor watering discipline.

Currently it is living in direct sunlight but it has lived in permanent shade for a extended period as well.

I don't know why I'm telling you this, it probably doesn't help knowing that your friends has high maintenance plants when there are invincible ones like ours in the world as well.

Are you sure it's a real one and not plastic?

This is an excellent observation/question and hilarious at the same time. It could be plastic. I've seen trees in malls with plastic leafs were I had to actually try to rip a leaf to make sure that it was real since they looked so real.

It's a fair question, but I can assure you all it is a real plant and alive. My wife removes old leaves from it 3 or 4 times a year and it grows (very slowly) towards the light if I rotate it.

I want your plant. If you figure out how it is call, then I am buying only those in the future. At this point, I am mass plants killer since they all died eventually under my watch.

A little research has revealed it is a Dragon Plant (Draceana marginata).

Apparently all of the Draceana family are easy to look after.

I have a rubber tree (ficus elastica) and it seems quite invincible. Got it from my grandmother about 15 years ago, it spent three years in my dad’s smoke-filled room and has moved three or four times. Right now there’s direct sunlight in spring and fall and a radiator right next to it in winter. Watering is so-and-so, easily lasts a week to a month without any water.

If I forget to water, some leaves will turn yellow but quickly recover once water is available again.

Oh, and it had half of it sawn off at one point because it grew too large, the other half is now also a very presentable little plant.

Dracaena marginata

I used to have one of those, but even that didn't survive my erratic watering regime... It did outlast all my other plants, though, except for two small cact<i|uses>.

Worse even, the manual was missing and the specs weren't clearly defined!

The problem with plant caring is that dogs and babies with respond to you, ask for food or water, cry, etc. Plants have a long response time and by the time you see leaves curling or turning colors, it could be too late.

I think the problem happens when you don't know the plant. I also have some trouble until I know how the plant looks when it's happy and how it changes when it's not. It's a very small difference in some cases, but if you look at it every day you just.. know after some time.

Apart from the supposedly easy one I have that is always unhappy no matter what I do. And yet it refuses to die, it only.. almost dies. For years now.

Don't generalize fish and plants, they are all not that easy to care for. I grow aquatic plants and raise lots of aquatic species, none of which are that simple.

I don't know about that. My friend tried to care for a couple Bonsai trees and they did not do too great.

Researching after the fact, we discovered that some species are notoriously difficult to care for.

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