Indoor Plants

Forty-two entries sit on this page and they do not sort into the tidy light-level shelves an indoor plant shop usually offers. Between them the forty-two list 170 pot-size options.

The groups that carry it

Five entries carry the Peace Lily name and they are not interchangeable. Spathiphyllum Sensation and Maracay are the big-leaved floor plants, both bought for foliage; Sensation flowers less freely than the compact selections. Sweet Rocco is the tidy compact one. Sweet Mario reads compact because it is stocked only at 140mm, but it belongs to the vigorous large-growing group. Flower Bunch is the one bought for the spathes.

The philodendrons split by habit, and leaf shape will mislead you. Philodendron Xanadu is self-heading and clumping, which is why it gets bought by the dozen for a run of shaded planters, and it appears twice, the plain listing carrying far more sizes. Rojo Congo is the broad floor-level rosette, and the red in its new growth only shows in the brightest shaded position you have. Stenolobum is one creeping architectural plant in a 250mm pot that wants real floor space to lean into.

Dracaena is scattered under several names. Madagascar Dragon Tree is the vertical one, and the bare cane left as lower leaves yellow off is the point of it. Malay Stripe is an indoor plant at 180mm and a multi-stemmed landscape clump at 90 and 300 litres. Mother In Law's Tongue has moved into Dracaena too.

What the pot sizes mean

A 140mm pot holds about a litre and a half of root, a 200mm around four and a half, a 300mm nearer fifteen. Twenty-three entries offer a 140mm, nineteen a 300mm, seven a 400mm at roughly thirty-five litres. Only three entries start above a 300mm pot, and two of those start at 90 litres, including Black Knight Sculptured, trained in the field over years into stepped bare canes.

Listings that look like doubles

Two bird's nest ferns are listed. They are different species. Turn a frond over: Asplenium australasicum carries a sharp raised keel down the back of the midrib, where the imported nidus is rounded underneath. The two ZZ plants are the plain species and the naturally compact Dark Zamicro. Thai Constellation is listed twice, the same laboratory-raised Monstera either way: one a single 180mm, the other seven pots from 120mm to 300mm. Both China Doll listings are Radermachera Summerscent, an outdoor evergreen small tree grown for scented warm-season flowers, so anyone hunting the fine-leaved windowsill china doll is on the wrong plant.

Who is on the wrong page

Native violet is the odd one out. It is a shaded-garden groundcover that runs on rooting runners and wants damp ground, not a room. Dracaena draco holds indoors for years in the brightest position in the house, but it is a courtyard plant first. Fiddle leaf and weeping fig are stocked here; the fuller ficus list sits in figs and ficus. The sword fern, the elkhorn and both aspleniums also appear in ferns and tree ferns. Light, watering and first-month leaf drop are covered in indoor plants that actually survive.

English Ivy needs a line of its own. It is a listed environmental weed across large parts of southern and eastern Australia, spread by birds eating the berries on mature growth, so keep it contained: the pot it arrives in on a verandah, or a wire topiary frame, and never climbing into a tree canopy or crossing into bushland. Bin the clippings. Schefflera amate stays in a container too, since the Queensland umbrella tree has naturalised in warm coastal districts.

Cast Iron Plant runs from 140mm to 300mm. It pushes one leaf at a time off a creeping rhizome, so a small pot takes years to look furnished. For a dark corner that has to read as finished now, buy the 300mm.