Hacker News Reader

Comment by eatonphil | Hacker News Reader

Pothos is so easy to grow! I started with one last year after a move and have propagated it successfully 8 times... I'm currently trying to get coworkers to accept clippings so I don't have to throw away excess.

Snake plants are also easy to grow indoors.

When I was first looking around for indoor plants I found the NASA study [0] on house plants for air quality and went with the easiest to maintain of these.

To find how "easy to maintain" a plant is, just Google it and most sites that talk about care will let you know.

[0] https://www.greenism.com/nasas-guide-to-air-filtering-housep...

View on HN

Peace lily is extremely easy to grow, we've had some in the house as long as I can remember. Nice to know they're great for air quality too.

Personally I avoid flowering plants because they tended to be more demanding. I've tried to find plants that don't "require" a flower to look beautiful.

This is my favorite plant. It's really easy to propagate, just pull it out of the pot, split in two and repot in separate containers. It really tells you when it needs watering, so as long as you pay attention it is impossible to kill. Other plants, such as ivy seem to look healthy until suddenly one day I look and notice they are completely dead.

Word. I had one and always forgot to get people to water it when I went away from the office - it would be limp, sagged flat, conformed to the pot and table top. Water it and it bounces back within the day.

In retrospect it's probably some sort of "do people in your office care" test, does anyone water your plants when you're away.

Probably worth noting that what is easy to grow for one user might not be for another - we all live in different parts of the world. At first glance, Peace Lilies wouldn't do well in my cold, dark and rainy part of UK.

Good point!

My grandmother lives in London and she's had a peace lily growing indoors for over a decade. Give it a try or ask around :)

I'm also in the UK and have a peace lilly growing very successfully under my stairs, which gets very little light.

I stood one on the window of my bathroom, and left it there for a couple of years.

Never watered it at all, and it thrived despite the leaky window. I always assumed it would get water, via condensation/steam from my shower and that seeemed to be the case.

For anyone with pets at home, please be aware that lilies are toxic to dogs and cats. Keep them away from your pets!

http://www.vetstreet.com/care/ten-household-plants-that-are-...

Pothos technically doesn’t even have to be planted. You can leave the cuttings in a vase of water for years and they’ll be perfectly happy. And I’ve seen a planted one bounce back after a month without water (though they thrive best being watered at least weekly).

The only thing it doesn’t like is light. Of course, as a plant, it needs some light to grow. But its threshold is ridiculously low. Even plenty of indirect light will cause it to grow small, sparse leaves instead of dense, broad ones. I recommend putting it in the darkest corner that exists in a room that has a window.

In my experience this is not totally the case. I have a patio that gets bright light for a few hours a day (it's surrounded by buildings and I'm rarely home during the day). The pothos I've put outside grow better (leaves are wider/longer and branches grow faster) than the ones I've kept in solely indirect light.

In an apartment that gets bright indirect light all day long, my pothos grows dense only if either it’s tucked in a corner far from the windows or I keep the shades closed. In direct sunlight it’ll even start growing leaves with larger white streaks instead of green or gold.

Obligatory reminder that the NASA Clean Air Study on indoor plants was not conducted under realistic home or office conditions, and follow-up studies have shown mixed results at best.

Adding a few plants to a room that's not hermetically sealed (let alone a huge open-concept office space) will not have any practical impact on air quality, be it oxygen levels or pollutant concentration. It'll make your space look good, though.