Why is this tweet laid over a checkered background?
to annoy you enough to make you comment about it probs
You assumed they died because they weak, but they likely died because of your horrible Spotify playlist.
“I bought a cactus. A week later it died. And I got depressed, because I thought, Damn. I am less nurturing than a desert.”
-Demetri Martin
The one thing a desert has that plants need and that’s in short supply in most homes is sunlight. We’re basically living in caves and desert plants are definitely not well-adapted for low-light-conditions (in contrast to forest plants).
You joke, but this happened to me. And worse: it was a gift, and she asked how it was doing.
its because a home, has little to no air flow, plus people often overwatering causing it to root rot, plus pest control due to humidity. the plants adapted to be on the outside tend to be more hardy than the ones on the inside.
also because plants, angionsperms, gymnosperms stop getting eaten, and took advantage of a empty niche left behind by the dinsoaurs, herbivorous mammals havnt evolve yet(you probably have a very primitive animals related to modern animals. plus angiosperm associated with insect pollination gave them an even bigger advantage.
Surely all plants adapted to be on the outside, unless the dinosaurs had greenhouses.
We’ve done some craaazy shit to plants, yo.
Mostly we take advantage of the crazy shit plants do anyways. We speed the process up with technology and attempt to control it.
They toss their pollen out into the environment and say “fuck everything”. So we have things like wheat, a combination of 3 grass species. Hay fever is reaction to a plant attempting to make babies with you.
The also do stuff like spontaneous ploidy changes and other mutations all the time.
In my opinion fully parasitic plants that don’t even have chlorophyll is way crazier than anything humans have done
They’re just dissapointing their ancestors, like you are
Harsh, but fair
My home is a place of natural selection for house plants. Occasionally someone gifts me a plant, most of them die within months. So far, spider plants are by far the best-adapted to the conditions in my home, they thrive.
I assume the big issue is that it’s too dark, or that I don’t water regularly enough. Apparently spider plants are particularly resistant to draught due to thick, water-retaining roots, grow relatively fast and easily grow offshoots.
Cacti would probably do well, too, but I don’t want plants in my home that you can injure yourself with. It’s also why I don’t like roses.
In my experience the only way to kill a spider plant is to water it every day
Tell that to the couple dozen propagations I have currently living in various sized vessels of water
My experience with banana plants.
They wither eventually if you never water them, too.
Most common reasons it seems people kill house plants
- Too dark
- Grossly overwatering
- Not applying any kind of fertilizer
Most house plants only need water once a week at most, or whenever the soil becomes dry. They should be given a few drips of plant food in their water every 2-3 weeks. Use a light meter app on your phone to see how much light they are getting, too little is most common but some vareities need shade and can get too much when sitting in a south window.
If you want a plant that does well in lower light and with frequent watering, I’d recommend the maidenhair fern.
Mine gets cranky if it’s not watered at least daily, and it would probably prefer twice a day! In the wild, these plants grow in places with constant water, e.g. alongside a waterfall. Still they’re fairly hardy plants somewhat acclimated to weathering dry spells; I’ve almost killed mine then had it return from the brink of death multiple times following a week of neglecting to water it. Ironically the maidenhair fern’s love of water means you won’t need a plant sitter to come over and water when you go on vacation: if you’re going to be gone for more than a few days, stick the pot in a tub of water a few inches deep; maidenhair ferns doesn’t seem to mind wet roots at all (I’ve done this for up to a month, no prob).
They do need at least a little light, such as an hour or so of direct morning light or hours of indirect light, making them a great choice for north-facing windows and other conditions where many houseplants would struggle.
Neat! But I doubt that most people who overwater houseplants will be able to keep up with a plant that needs daily watering …
I think it could work well if you’re the type of person who can follow a daily schedule better than a weekly or biweekly schedule (for instance, if you build it into your routine, e.g. “every day after finishing breakfast the first thing I do is water the houseplants”). It could also work well if having to make a judgment call (“water only when the soil is dry”) is too intimidating or can’t be scheduled into a calendar app with automated reminders.
I know of some plants that can tolerate irregular watering, but can’t think of many that thrive with it. Even in the wild, the seeming randomness of rainfall has at least a seasonal pattern to it, and the plants that are best suited to irregular watering are generally not ideal houseplants for various reasons, like they go dormant during dry spells and start looking ugly, or drop a bunch of leaves when underwatered and make a mess, or require huge root systems, etc. Probably the best houseplants for the truly incapable of following a watering schedule are the drama queens: those plants that have big, showy leaves that droop significantly when thirsty, but quickly perk back up after watering. Noticing this still requires attention, of course, but wilting leaves are much easier to notice than dry soil. I’ve never grown a houseplant like that so I can’t come up with specific examples, but I know they exist.
The first two are the most definite reason I’ve killed a lot of plants.
A friend came over and nearly screamed “you should be watering these every 2 WEEKS NOT 2 DAYS!!”.
But what do you mean that 5m from a window is “too dark”? I can see fine…
But what do you mean that 5m from a window is “too dark”? I can see fine…
I know you are joking, but humans are terrible at guessing brightness. A living room that appears brightly lit by an artificial light is still about 100 times dimmer than direct sunlight on a summer day
500 lumen per square meter is plenty for a living room, but in my grow tents I’m running 50000 lumen per square meter, which still gives me a lower brightness than direct sunlight
Is hard water something that many houseplants struggle with? I always lived in places with pretty hard water, I wonder if that contributes to the low houseplant survival rate in my home.
I haven’t heard of (or personally experienced) hard water being a problem, but I’ve been told chlorinated/fluoridated water can be. Filtered water, or water that’s sat out for 24+ hrs (this allows chlorine to evaporate), is supposedly better for plant health. Some species are more susceptible to these chemicals than others, but I’m uncertain if chlorine/fluoride alone is enough to kill a houseplant.
We didn’t water our succulents for like 6 months. Not all of them lived, but the survivors are unkillable.
also certain succulents are more fickle, plants in the aizocae, stone plants,etc. Orchids, you treat them like sucuclents too, dont overwater and they may flower.
One of our hardy ones is a jade plant/money tree (Crassula ovata), absolute trooper, it’s like 12 years old now. Another is a burro’s/donkey tail (Sedum morganianum), and the last is some random cactus I don’t know the identity of that we got as a propagation gift.
Obligatory IANAP (I am not a paleontologist).
My understanding is that many (most?) living plants did die; what survived were seeds that could wait around for conditions to be a bit less apocalyptic before sprouting, kinda like what happens with major wildfires. Similarly, the animals that survived were a lot of creatures that could live off seeds and other remaining plant matter (such as small mammals, which had previously been an underdog in the Mesozoic).
plants are very adaptable, depending on the clade. some can only sprout if their seeds are damaged fires, or if they have a period of dormancy. genetically, polyploidy has given plants significant advantages as well, having multiple copies(more than 2, in series of 2s and odd numbers) allow some alleles to evolve without causing detrimental effects. plus mycoheterotrophic plants started to evolve(just before or around this time, in many lineages to take advantage of fungal symbionts and low light, the tradeoff is they are rare for the most part.
It turned out the tree over my yard is a camphor tree that drops allelopathic seeds on everything
This person’s critical thinking skills are non-existent.
