Parlour palm

The parlour palm grows in the rainforest understorey of southern Mexico and Guatemala, in deep shade where almost nothing else with fronds will grow. That is exactly why the Victorians filled their parlours with it: it survived gas lamps, coal smoke and north facing rooms when nothing else would. It is still one of the few palms that can be recommended for a genuinely dim corner, it stays small enough for a table, and it is on the list of plants that are safe around animals.

Light

Low light is genuinely tolerated. A north window in the northern hemisphere or a south one in the southern suits it, and it will hold on some distance back from a window in a room that is merely bright. Growth is slow in the dark, perhaps two or three new fronds a year, but the plant does not thin out or decline the way most palms do.

Direct sun is what it cannot take. An hour of afternoon sun through glass yellows the fronds and leaves dry brown patches, and the damage does not fade.

Water and humidity

Water when the top 2 to 3 cm of compost is dry, which is roughly weekly in summer and every fortnight in winter. Soak it thoroughly, let it drain, and empty the saucer. It wants lightly moist compost rather than wet, and a pot left standing in water rots at the root within a few weeks.

Humidity keeps the fronds green at the tips. It does not need a bathroom, but it is much happier grouped with other plants, standing on a tray of wet pebbles, or well away from a radiator than it is alone in a heated room. Where the tap water is hard or fluoridated, rainwater visibly reduces the browning.

Feeding and repotting

Two or three half strength feeds across spring and summer are enough, and none in winter. This is a slow plant and unused feed accumulates in the compost as salt, which browns the tips just as effectively as dry air.

Repot only when it is genuinely potbound, in spring, one size up. Palm roots dislike disturbance, so resist teasing them apart, and expect the plant to stand still for a few weeks afterwards.

Pruning, and one thing never to do

Cut a frond off at the base of its stalk once it has gone fully brown, and not before, because a partly green frond is still feeding the plant. Brown tips can be trimmed with scissors, following the natural shape of the leaflet so the cut does not show.

The one thing never to do is cut the growing tip off a stem. A palm has a single growing point at the top of each stem, and a stem that loses it does not branch and does not recover; it simply stops and dies back. If a pot looks thin, the answer is another plant in it, not a haircut. Most parlour palms are sold as several seedlings in one pot for exactly this reason.

Propagation

Division at repotting is the only practical method. Tip the plant out, find where the stems separate with roots of their own, and pot the pieces up individually. Seed is possible and slow, and not worth the years.

Ailments

Brown tips are dry air, hard water or feed salts. Fine webbing is spider mites, which arrive when the air is dry, so the two problems share a cure. A single yellowing lower frond is age; several at once with wet compost is drowning. The ledger below has the rest, and a monthly rinse under a shower prevents most of it.