Flamingo flower

The flamingo flower grows in the wet forests of Colombia and Ecuador, perched on tree trunks and in leaf litter rather than rooted in soil. The waxy red or pink shield that everyone calls the flower is a spathe, a modified leaf, and the actual flowers are the tiny bumps on the pale spike standing out of it. Because that spathe lasts for weeks and the plant produces them one after another when it is happy, an anthurium is one of the longest flowering things you can keep indoors. The difficulty is that it is fussy about exactly two things, light and drainage, and generous with neither if you get them wrong.

Light

Bright indirect light is the difference between a plant with leaves and a plant with flowers. Beside an east window, or a metre or two from a brighter one with the harshest sun filtered, it will produce a spathe every few weeks through spring and summer. In a medium lit room it stays green, healthy and completely flowerless, which is the single most common complaint about it.

Direct sun is too much. It bleaches the leaves and leaves dry brown patches on the spathes.

Water

Water when the top 3 cm of the mix is dry, roughly every six days in summer and every eleven in winter, and let it drain thoroughly. It wants to be lightly moist, never wet and never bone dry.

Drainage matters more than the interval. In the wild the roots sit in leaf litter with air all around them, and in a bag of ordinary potting compost they suffocate. A coarse mix of bark, perlite and coir is worth making up, and it is usually the fix for a plant that yellows from the bottom no matter how carefully you water.

Humidity

It comes from cloud forest and it shows. In a dry heated room the leaf tips brown and the spathes are smaller and shorter lived. A bathroom or kitchen suits it, and elsewhere a tray of wet pebbles and a group of neighbouring plants both help. Keep it away from radiators and cold draughts alike; below about 16 degrees it stops growing and dark patches appear on the leaves.

Feeding and repotting

Feed at a quarter to a half strength every second watering through spring and summer, using something higher in phosphorus than nitrogen, and stop in winter. Too much nitrogen gives you large leaves and green spathes.

Repot in spring, one size up only, into fresh coarse mix. It flowers better slightly potbound, so there is no hurry, and a pot much bigger than the roots stays wet and encourages leaves at the expense of flowers.

Pruning and propagation

Cut spent spathes off at the base of their stalk once they have gone green and then brown, and remove yellowing leaves the same way. Aerial roots that appear at the base can be tucked back into the mix or left alone.

Divide at repotting. Tip the plant out, find where a clump separates naturally into crowns, and pull it into pieces that each keep several leaves and a fair share of roots. Pot them into the same coarse mix, keep them warm and humid and out of direct light for a fortnight, and they establish quickly.

Ailments

No flowers means not enough light or too big a pot. Green spathes are age or too much nitrogen. Yellow lower leaves mean the mix is holding too much water. Brown tips are dry air or feed salts. Dark soft patches are cold. The ledger below has the fixes.