Cheery Red for Indoor Colour

Although you might not think so to see the indoor plants at our house these days, I very much love houseplants. There are incredible and fascinating choices out there in some areas, depending on how good your local nursery, flower shop, garden centre or even department store is at sourcing and caring for plants. Sometimes, the plants at these places resemble mine (and a call to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Houseplants might be in order) but other facilities know plants and know how to take care of them.
Here's a lovely example of a plant that is normally fairly tough...but they resent being left unwatered for weeks on end, or being put outside in a pot without drainage during a rainy rainy summer. Yes, I'm hanging my head. Cathy of Outside In will likely be scandalized by my poor house plant-caring skills. 

It didn't used to be like that. When I was at Ag. college, my room on campus was home to anywhere up to 100 plants. No, not that kind of plant. Ordinary flowering plants, foliage plants, cacti, succulents, from lithops (living stones) to Monstera and ficus--but never did I see a ficus as pretty as this one until recent years. 

Back in the autumn I visited a nursery to find photos for a story I was doing about indoor gardening with plants, and I saw some I'd never seen before--and may not see again. This is called Dipladenia, Crimson Parasol plant. It's apparently related to Mandevilla, and I was quite taken by it, but didn't bring one home. I like to know more about plants before I bring them into the house, on account of the cat children.

I do not know what this is at all. I seem to have seen something like it on someone's blog recently, and I want to call it a red clerodendron (I had a blue one one time) but I'd be fibbing if I said I even know what genus it is. Fascinating and I should definitely have succumbed to the urge to buy it. 

And this? Its colourful flower/bracts are awesome enough, but the foliage? Ohhhh, I looked long and hard at this bougainvillea, never having seen one with variegated foliage before, but I guess they're quite common where they're easy to find. Too pricy for me, with my talent for causing houseplants to go to sleep. 

One of my favourite, if curious, plants has always been the crown of thorns (Euphorbia milii). It used to come in two flower colours, red and white, but now you see pink and yellow and probably others as well. Again, it depends on where you live. I had a yellow one, but it seemed more spleeny than the more common red varieties. 

Here's a glorious foliage plant that some regions can grow nicely outdoors at least in the warm months, longer if they live in civilized climates without so many snowflakes as I have. Caladium don't need to flower, with foliage like this, do they? Marvelous plants, but fussy indoors if you don't give them adequate moisture/humidity.

And then there's hibsicus. Some day, I'll get to visit Hawaii and see plants like this blooming in their native habitat. They do well for me usually for a few years, but leaving them out one night too long during autumn in my climate is a very, very bad plan. "And that's all I have to say about that!"

I know they're ubiquitous these days, almost as much so as geraniums. I do not care. Gerberas have this appeal to them that causes me to stop and stare and force myself to bring one home. Or maybe two. Or more. They have lovely tidy blooms, brilliant colours, not-totally-nondescript foliage, and I just plain like them. Sometimes they even do well outside as container plants (I'm speaking from my experience--they may well do much, much better for others. ) It won't surprise anyone that one leaped into my wagon at the grocery store in Liverpool yesterday. It wanted to take up residence on my office desk. Could I refuse? No. Is it red? No, brilliant yellow, in honour of the spring that I do assume will find us one of these days.