I have been searching for the perfect plant:
– easy to grow, care for
– fragrant scent or some unique/useful feature
– requires little light, indoor
I acquired the following four plants recently:
Patchouli Oil Plant
Eyeball plant or Peek-a-boo plant (“Spilanthes”)
Fishtail Hoya
Peace Lily
The Patchouli Plant is apparently picky about living conditions.
I give this plant 15 days before it kills over.
10% survival rate expected.
I have one.
However, it is an indoor plant and requires only indirect light.
The instructions included with the plant suggest giving it a blast of humidity by sticking it in the bathroom with hot water running.
I tried that, but didn’t leave it in there for very long.
So my plant is a bit droopy at this point.
The interesting thing about the Patchouli is that its used in many men’s cologne’s.
In this case, I’m using a home made wick system to keep the soil moist.
We’ll see.
Eyeball plant or Peek-a-boo plant (“Spilanthes”)
The flowers resemble eye balls.
This plant isn’t happy either.
I expect it to pull through, though.
No scent this time, this plant does have medicinal properties though.
It can act as a mild pain killer (also called the toothache plant).
Fishtail Hoya
Hoyas.
I’ve heard that Hoyas are hard to kill.
At least the sales page said so.
They claim Hoyas are good for the black thumbs out there.
If it flowers, it’ll have a nice scent.
Peace Lily
Apparently this has some nice air-cleaning properties (phytoremediation).
And since my air filter seems to have some issues with ozone, I figured to try plants this time.
Update: January 24
Eyeball plant is dead – but its an annual, so it was expected.
Could have been bad PH or light amounts as well.
The Patchouli lives, but isn’t happy.
Probably wants more humidity.
Picky Fn plants.
And the hoya might as well be fake for all the growing its been doing (none).