Deb in UT: January 2015

Monday, January 5, 2015

Air Plants

I was searching for gift ideas for college students when I learned about air plants which are supposed to be easy to grow. They are from the bromeliad family, genus tillandsia. They grow in the wild in South and Central America and some places in the southern United States. I'm not sure they like our dry Utah air.

I bought a terrarium kit online for my college-going daughter that included three air plants. I signed up for Twitter so I could "like" the Florida company and get a free plant. They sent me four plants in the mail: three from the species tillandsia ionantha and one tillandsia argentea. Only two of the plants fit in the terrarium so I gifted one to a younger daughter and one to myself. The terrarium is now safely in Idaho. The other two are here.

I worried about them for the first week, but I think they've adjusted. The suggestion is to soak them once a week for twenty minutes and maybe mist them a couple of times a week. I'm finding here in our dry climate they like a good soak every couple of days. I mist the tillandsia argentea in between soaks because it has thinner leaves.

The cool thing about air plants is they don't get their nutrients from dirt; they get them from the air. If they have roots, their function is to attach themselves to a rock or another plant. They aren't parasitical. Since they don't need dirt, they can grow in any kind of container and can easily be moved from one place to another. I've seen them sit in shells and dishes. Some people hot glue them to drift wood. I'm not totally happy with the current home of my younger daughter's tillandsia argentea; I think she'd like a terrarium, but I really like how the ionantha sits in the opening of the shofar.