Air plants 101

Lessons from tillandsia trial and error

Is it a plant? Is it a moss? Is it a weed?

It’s an air plant.

Tillandsia have gotten really popular over the past ten years, perhaps because they are slightly odd (no soil), but also look understated and minimal. If, like a friend of mine, you think houseplants make your house look “cluttered” (why are we even friends?!?), air plants are a great alternative.

Air plants are epiphytes, which means that they don’t need soil to grow and, in the wild, extract moisture from the air around them.

If you live in the American south, air plants are probably a lot more familiar to you than to those of us dwelling in the more northern parts of the world. The Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) covering this Floridian tree is an air plant, clinging on to the tree and getting its water from the humid Florida air.

Impressive Spanish moss creating that Southern Gothic feel.

Taking care of tillandsia

Since air plants don’t need soil to grow, you needn’t put them in a pot and can do all kinds of creative things with them. They do need light, although not direct sunlight. Mine are happy in front of the kitchen window, which gets plenty of indirect light but no direct sunshine. From experience I know that shade is not their friend.

I would always ensure that you can still take your air plants out of whatever container you’ve put them into (or surface you’ve attached them to). When living in houses, they do need to be watered regularly, but if too much moisture stays in between their leaves, especially towards the bottom, they will rot and die. Making sure that there is some space around the air plants and giving them time to properly dry before you put them back in their container/display helps prevent rot.

The glass container I keep my air plants in.

How often to water your air plants turns out to be a surprisingly contentious subject. I ‘water’ mine once every two weeks. Some books suggest a weekly watering, and this website even recommends misting them 2 to 4 times a week, or even daily. I’m a conservative water-giver, and have discovered that mine do fine on once every two weeks.

I used to water my air plants by dunking them in a glass of water and keeping them there for 20 minutes or so. Even though I’d let them dry out afterwards for at least 24 hours, more than one of them died from rot when moisture got trapped between their leaves.

Now, I mist them thoroughly once every two weeks, and then put them on a plate to dry for at least 24 hours. When misting them, I make sure that they get wet to such an extent that they get a little darker in colour (if you have one of those pale grey ones you can see this particularly well).

Misting with the most uncomfortable spray bottle in the world.

If you look closely, you’ll see that some of your air plants will have little roots at the bottom. They don’t use these to absorb nutrients (they do that through their leaves), but for structural support when growing in the wild.

Propagating tillandsia

You can propagate air plants, but you need a bit of luck and a lot of patience. Air plants can flower, which is a really amazing thing to see. These unassuming plants suddenly start making brightly coloured flowers, and often the plants’ leaves also change in hue.

So pretty! This plant is actually still alive, 5+ years on.

Two things tend to happen after flowering, one of them being that the air plant creates ‘pups’, or small baby air plants attached to its bottom. Sometimes you also see those pups on plants that haven’t flowered yet: in that case, the air plant you bought was not really one plant, but two air plants growing together.

If your plant lives long enough after flowering, and your pup has grown to at least half the size of the mother plant (preferably larger), you can gently pull it off the mother plant. I’ve done this once, so far, and the pup still lives.

Why tillandsia die (which they will)

One of the amazing things that can happen if you have air plants in your house is that they flower.

The bad news is, though, that most of them die after flowering. This makes biological sense. The plant has ‘reproduced’ itself (or at least, made an attempt at this), so now it can die. They seem to just stop taking in nutrients and eventually dry up and die. Depending on the air plant, they die within months—or, if you’re fortunate, hang on longer. I’ve had one that last flowered at least five years ago and it’s still going strong.

This one used to be green and turned bright pink before flowering (and then died…).

Your air plant can also dry out (when it’s not getting enough moisture), or rot (when it’s getting too much moisture). As with many other plants, the difference between the two can often be hard to tell. Generally, if your air plant looks shrivelled and there’s no mushy bits at the bottom or in between the leaves, it’s dried out. If it looks shrivelled but there’s mushy bits at the bottom, or soggy bits at the bottom of the leaves, you’ve overwatered.

Do you own any air plants? And how do you take care of them? Leave a comment and join the conversation.

Succulent watch

A few weeks ago I wrote how in the Northern hemisphere the propagation season is now over. Propagating your plants works best when they are vigorously growing, so in spring and summer. In autumn and winter, plants slow down their growth because they get less sunshine. For a new baby plant, this time of year just doesn’t give it the best start in life.

And then, one morning this weekend as I was opening the curtains in my study, I noticed that one of my plants looked a bit dodgy. I tried to move it and in doing so, barely touched an already top-heavy Sedum morganianum (burro’s tail). A shower of succulent leaves fell to the floor, one branch broke off and I was left awkwardly holding a pot and a handful of succulent parts.

The Sedum morganianum (burro’s tail) after its accident.

The plant will be fine. I’ve had it for about six years (there’s a story to it), and it’s grown surprisingly fast—and has gotten very heavy and nearly impossible to move. So shedding some (a lot…) of its leaves and branches is not necessarily a bad thing.

But I can’t resist trying to propagate a plant, and took a handful of the fallen leaves and put them in a dish. I’ve propagated these leaves before: with this particular plant, it’s about a 50/50 success rate in my experience.

Especially since it’s winter, and succulents love sun so much, I’m curious to see how long it will take for these leaves to grow roots (if they do at all). Over the coming months I’ll be checking in with my little dish, and reporting back to you here.

The leaves on November 19th.

The leaves are in a shallow terracotta dish, in which I put a little bit of well-draining soil just to allow the moisture to stick around a tiny bit longer (but not too longer). I’ll mist them with water irregularly.