How often to water flamingo flower

The interval

A flamingo flower is watered about every 6 days while it is growing and about every 11 days in winter. Growing means the warm, bright months from spring to early autumn, roughly March to September in the northern hemisphere and September to March in the southern. Winter is the cold, short-day part of your own year, and the Royal Horticultural Society advises watering sparingly then. A windowsill that turns cold at night dries the pot slowly and holds the water longer than the interval suggests.

Check by touch before you trust the number. The mix is coarse and drains fast, so push a finger into it. The top 3 cm should be dry and the mix below it just damp, not wet. The RHS checks at about 5 cm, so if you are in doubt go a little deeper. Lift the pot too. A coarse mix full of water is clearly heavier than the same pot a few days on.

Water from the top, slowly, with water that is not cold. The RHS says cold water can damage the plant, as can temperatures of 10 degrees or lower, and that rainwater or filtered water is best, because tap water in a hard water area is alkaline and anthuriums like an acid mix. Let it drain fully and empty the saucer.

Too much water shows as yellow lower leaves and eventually as root rot. Too little, or dry air, shows as brown leaf tips and edges, and the RHS says dry air often causes the edges to brown. In a warm, dry room the two are hard to tell apart, so check the mix first and the air second. Humidity is high for this plant, so a light misting about every 3 days, a tray of pebbles with the pot standing above the water, or a bathroom with a window all help.

What is particular to this plant is that it grows on trees. Plants of the World Online describes it as an epiphytic subshrub of the wet tropics, so the roots are made for air and a quick rinse of rain, not for steady wet. That is why a mix that stays soggy kills it faster than a missed watering does.

Related guides

How to tell whether a plant actually needs water

The finger, the weight, the leaf and the pot. Four ways to read a plant's thirst, and what overwatering actually is.

Rescuing an overwatered plant

How to tell overwatering from underwatering, how much root damage is recoverable, and the exact rescue steps once compost has stayed wet too long.

Watering through a southern winter

Winter in the southern hemisphere runs June to August, and houseplants drink far less then. How to read the soil, and why overwatering is the bigger risk.