Areca palm

The areca palm grows wild in a small part of eastern Madagascar, where it is rare enough to be listed as endangered even though it is one of the most widely sold houseplants in the world. In the wild it forms clumps of slender yellowish stems in humid forest; indoors it is sold as a dozen seedlings crowded into one pot, which looks full immediately and is the source of most of the trouble people have with it. It is worth understanding that a shop bought areca is a group of young plants rather than a single mature one, and that it wants humidity above everything else.

Light

Bright indirect light, close to a window with the harshest midday sun filtered by a curtain. It handles a little gentle direct morning sun and scorches in the afternoon kind. In a dim room it does not die quickly but it thins out, the lower fronds yellow one by one, and it never replaces them.

Turn the pot every few weeks so it grows evenly. Fronds all lean towards the light and a palm that is never turned ends up flat on one side.

Water and humidity

Keep the compost lightly moist through the growing season and slightly drier in winter, watering when the top 3 cm is dry. That is roughly every six days in summer and every twelve in winter in an average room. Water thoroughly, let it drain, and empty the saucer, because a palm left standing in water rots at the root within weeks.

Water quality matters. Palms are unusually sensitive to fluoride and to salts from feed, and both show as brown tips on the oldest fronds first. Rainwater is the simplest fix, and flushing the pot through with plain water every few months washes accumulated salts out.

Humidity is the other half of keeping the fronds green. In a dry heated room the tips brown and spider mites arrive within weeks. Group it with other plants, stand it on a tray of wet pebbles, and keep it away from radiators and air vents.

Feeding and repotting

Feed at half strength monthly through spring and summer and stop in winter. Use a feed that includes trace elements: an areca short of magnesium yellows between the veins of its older fronds, which is easily mistaken for overwatering.

Repot only when it is genuinely potbound, in spring, and go up one size. Palm roots dislike disturbance and a plant moved for no reason sulks for months. Use a free draining compost with bark and perlite, and resist the urge to tease the roots apart.

Pruning

Cut a frond off only once it has gone fully brown; while any of it is green it is still feeding the plant. Cut at the base of its stem, close to the main stems, with clean secateurs, and never cut the growing point at the top of a stem, because a palm stem that loses its tip does not branch and will not regrow.

Brown tips can be trimmed with scissors. Follow the natural shape of the leaflet rather than cutting straight across and the trim stays invisible.

Ailments

Brown tips are dry air and water quality. Fine webbing between the leaflets is spider mites, and they are almost always a symptom of the same dry air. Yellowing between the veins on older fronds is a feed problem rather than a water one. A limp palm in wet compost is drowning. The ledger below has the details, and the single most useful habit is to run the whole plant under a shower every month or two, which raises the humidity, washes the dust off and removes mites before they establish.