Hello friends, welcome to houseplant tips and tricks! Today I’m going to give you some tips on caring for air plants.
I don’t think I would classify air plants as being the most popular houseplants on the market, but I would argue they are the most niche houseplants on the market, and you can fight me on that. There is just no plant like air plants—these plants that you literally just have sitting on the table here, and they’re able to survive because all they need is light and water. They don’t need any soil because this plant really doesn’t have any roots. Well, technically, these plants can make roots, as you can see here on the back side of this Tillandsia tectorum that I have right here. The super fuzzy Tillandsia, Tillandsia being the scientific name or the genus for air plants. This one does have some visible roots hiding on the back here, but they are not actually used to absorb nutrients. These are actually used to grab onto a host in nature, whether it’s a tree or a side of the cliff. Air plants will grow on practically anything, and since these roots are not used to obtain nutrients, we don’t need to put them in a planter, so we can just set them here on the table. So, we can practically display our air plants anywhere we want in our homes.
But maybe you shouldn’t because these are still living plants, and they require probably more light than you would think in order for them to survive in your home. They always say the darkest shade outdoors is brighter than the brightest light indoors. Is that necessarily true? I don’t think so, but plants are native to the outdoors and not the indoors, so of course, anything is going to grow better outside than it would inside, of course, depending on the temperature. So, that being said, it would be really easy and tempting to place this air plant, this beautiful air plant, this Tillandsia xerographica
one right here, is a Tillandsia xerographica, one of the largest and most popular air plants that you’re going to find in stores. It would be so easy to just place this wherever I want and hope that it’s going to stay as beautiful looking as this, but that is likely not going to be the case. These plants require a decent amount of light. How much light? A good question. You can kind of judge your plant’s foliage, the color of the plant’s foliage, and kind of determine how much light you’re going to need to give your air plants in order for it to grow to its fullest potential.
These two air plants right here, this Tillandsia tectorum, Tillandsia xerographica, you can see that they have much more whitish-silvery foliage. This one is much more green, like on par with the green of a golden pothos or Justana Janet Craig, some of the easiest low-light houseplants that you’re going to find in your home. This greener air plant is going to thrive in the medium-bright and direct area light areas of your home, say, where a golden pothos is going to thrive. These whiter air plants over here, it’s not necessarily the case. In nature, where these are growing, these are not growing where this Tillandsia but see is, where it’s getting covered by the trees. These kind of plants are growing on the side of cliffs in full sun. They have no tree foliage canopy blocking out those sun rays whatsoever. These are going to require bright light conditions in order to grow their fullest potential or even really to survive and to grow in general.
Even the harsh light of a south-facing window, these Tillandsias can totally handle. In fact, this one right here, this super fuzzy guy that looks like it would crisp up in the direct sunlight of a south-facing window, it sucks it all down and it just, in turn, makes it look like this beautiful plant right here. It really is just such a stunning houseplant. But even these greener air plants, you’re not going to be able to put them on a dark shelf or in a dark corner in your home 10 feet away from a window and expect it to grow or honestly even survive. It’s just not going to be the case. Even these greener air plants, they’re going to need to be kept within like 6 to 8 feet of a bright east or west-facing window, maybe within a couple of feet of a north-facing window if you’re in the northern hemisphere where that’s the lowest light exposure in the home. These are going to need it in order to survive.
All in all, if you’re going to take away anything from today’s article, it’s that air plants require probably more light than you would think at first when you first get introduced to these types of plants. When I first got air plants, I just put them on a shelf where they would fill in the gaps nicely but not really considering the lighting, and within like a month, I would have a dead air plant, even though I was watering it. I just didn’t really know what I was doing wrong. I just wasn’t giving the plant enough light. Watering is absolutely important to have a healthy air plant, but the lighting, I just think, is tenfold that much more important to consider.
But speaking of watering, that’s obviously something that’s very important to consider for your air plants as well because you’re not going to have the indication of dry soil to water your air plants when there’s no soil or planter involved. So, how do you know when to water your air plants? The best answer I can give you is to really just stay on top of it and have more of a routine schedule, much more of a routine than you would with watering your house plants. You can soak them, you can rinse them, however you want to do it. I throw all of mine in the shower when I go ahead and water my mounted plants, like my staghorn fern that’s probably off-camera, but if you’ve watched this series here, you’ve probably seen it before. Some of the other mounted plants that I have here in my home.
But the difference between the mounted plants and the air plants, of course, is that I’m watering the actual plant on these, versus the mounted plants I’m just moistening the sphagnum moss or whatever potting medium I’m growing the plants in on whatever mount I’m using. These actually need to be physically soaked in order for them to obtain their nutrients. But even more than that, because we are completely soaking the leaves of this plant, that can incite rot. If we were just to pour water all over a dracaena or a snake plant and let water sit in all those cracks and crevices inside the plant, it would probably rot, right? Yes, the answer is yes, it probably would. So, that’s something that could happen very easily with specifically a super succulent air plant like this Tillandsia xerographica here. So, after we go ahead and soak this, rinse this, spray it down with a spray bottle, however you want to go about watering it, there is absolutely no wrong way.
Alright, take two. After you go ahead and water your air plant, you can go ahead, instead of placing it upright, you’re going to go ahead and place it as upside down as you can. Well, this one doesn’t really want to go upside down, but you place it upside down, and the water is going to drain out of those cracks and crevices, and that’s going to ward off any rot problems that you might have if you do soak your air plants, like you place them in a bucket of water or something, let them sit for a little bit. Just keep in mind how long you do allow them to sit inside that bucket of water. Back when I worked at the houseplants store, there were a couple of times that the air plants sat a little too long in the water, and I would pick up a xerographica to shake it out a little bit, and the whole thing just fell apart because it sat too long and it started to rot. So, there is a time limit. That’s why I kind of prefer to just place mine in the shower and let it go for just a couple of minutes or spray them down with a spray bottle. But like I said, there’s no wrong way to do it, but there is a wrong way to do it the right way, as is with everything in life. If you do successfully grow an air plant in your home for a decent amount of time, maybe a couple of years, you might notice that it might bloom. It might stick out a flower stalk from the center here, just like a bromeliad would if you’re familiar with those, as these are actually in the same family as bromeliads, very closely related.
However, just like bromeliads, when your air plants flower, they’re gonna die. So, you can go ahead and cut the flower back if you want to buy yourself some time, but if this plant does go ahead and flower and you allow it to, it’s just going to follow the cycle of life where it starts to produce. I don’t have any examples here, but they would come off the bottom of the plant because this plant has not flowered, hence why you don’t have any examples. Once this plant flowers, it would start to produce all of these baby plants around the base of the plant, and once this plant flowers, it’s going to start putting all of this energy into creating those baby plants. So, in like a year’s time after that, you would have multiple Tillandsia xerographicas to grow in the future, although this is a bad example because this plant right here was probably like 10 years old, believe it or not, because these things are such slow growers. Maybe this is going to be more apparent with these smaller Tillandsias like this very common Tillandsia ionantha that I have right here, probably one of the most common air plants that you’re going to find in stores. But just using this one as an example because it’s larger and, of course, much easier to show you the details.
Just something to consider if your air plants do bloom. If you buy an air plant that’s in bloom at the houseplant store because you like the way it looks, just a couple of things to consider. And as I was saying at first, air plants are just so incredibly niche. I would argue they’re the most niche houseplants in existence because they are just so unlike any other, and the ways that you can display them are also just so unlike any other. You can see right here I have this wood slat mount. I have just a couple of air plants placed in here as if it’s a picture frame. This is often used to physically mount plants on like an orchid or a fern. I’ve done that in the past here on the series, but because these don’t have any roots, I don’t have to actually physically mount them, so I can just place them in these little gaps right here and kind of treat it like it’s a little piece of artwork.
But the options are really endless. You can just place them wherever you want. If that’s fine. Sometimes they make more intricate mounts of like pieces of bark. That’s where I have this one hanging out in my home, so it looks like it’s just growing on the side of the tree, even though this one technically grows on the side of cliffs. I think we’re getting a little too specific there. I think I’m just going for the aesthetic. I could even just throw it in a pot and call it a day, and that really actually looks pretty fantastic. I display them in wall baskets. You can put them in like little hanging metal contraptions to keep them in place and hang them all throughout your home. Or some people like to put them upside down, specifically this kind, they’ll put it upside down in a sea urchin shell to make it look like a jellyfish, perfect for your beach-themed bathroom.
There are literally so many options. You could get so creative with these. I’m always trying to come up with new ways that I can go ahead and display my air plants. I’m really liking the xerographica in this pot though. Honestly, that looks really good. But I just truly think that air plants are one of the most underappreciated houseplants on the market. I don’t think that many people are really that excited about them. I don’t think anybody really considers themselves an air plant collector. I mean, we all should because they’re incredible. I’m just trying to bring some awareness to a really incredible group of plants that, like I said, just doesn’t get the attention that it deserves. So, whether you’re trying to spruce up an area on your walls or fill in the gaps on a little plant display, as long as there’s enough light, air plants are the perfect plants for all of those situations.
But I think that about covers all the tips I had to share for caring for air plants today, one of the coolest types of plants out there.. Have a great time!
