Denna sida på svenska. This is a page about my favorite indoor plant - the Spider Plant - ("Ampellilja" in Swedish). I have cultivated and collected these pretty plants for many years. I never kill my Spider Plants when they grow old, as you are recommended in books, instead I just keep on caring for them and they keep on growing and getting bigger and bigger. When they get really big and old, after many years, they look different when you look close. They have a center that is lying down on top of the soil in the pot, from which the leaves grow upwards in the normal fashion, and new roots will protrude and grow downwards.
On the photo to the right
you can see the difference in size between my smallest
and largest varieties. To the right is the all green variety,
my oldest variety of Spider Plant. In the middle is my
next oldest, the one with white stripes in the middle
of the leaves. To the left is my fourth variety, the
smallest one with white stripes in the middle of the
leaves.
When this photo was taken I did not have the Laxum variety,
which is even smaller. I only have spider plants, if I have
any other plants I usually give them away after a while... At the moment I have a dandelion plant, an outdoor weed,
in my kitchen window. I'm trying to see if I can grow them
as food for my pets but it does not thrive at all...
My goal with these spider plants is threefold:
One sure way to make spider plants grow really big is to remove as many of the stolons (the long stems with flowers and baby plants on) as possible. Only do this if you have as many spider plants as you need! I also repot younger specimens (under 2 years old) several times a year. Older plants usually gets repotted at least once a year.
Older plants get bigger. I guess some of my big plants are over 15 years old, some even may be almost 25 years old, or even older. I moved to Stockholm in 1980 and I still have a few spider plants that I took with me then. In more than 30 years I've only managed to kill one spider plant.
Really old spider plants also develop weak stems that has roots that protude into the air. I usually try to bend these stems slightly in order to keep them inside the pot, otherwise they will hang over the border of the pot and easily get broken. The photo to the right shows such a stem, that I managed to keep inside the pot, and a bunch of white short roots that hasn't reached the soil. That stem is many, many years old, it belongs to one my oldest spider plants.
The photo to the left shows a younger stem, hanging on the side of the pot, still with leaves along most of its length. As you can see it hangs down for 6 or 7 cm and then bends upwards again. This one is also many years old, but not one of my oldest spider plants.
To the right is a photo of a stem that got broken off, by accident. I put it in water and after a while it had lots of roots, as you can see in the photo.
I usually put about 5 to 7 small plantlets in each pot. But I do have several pots with only one plant in each. It seems logical to plant them together, since there are so many plantlets produced all the time :-)
The colour these plants will have depends upon the
strength of the light they get. In good, strong light
the variegating colours (white or yellow banded) will be very
bright and clear, but in less light these colours will
get less clear, actually the yellow stripes may be
almost invisible in too little light. In very little
light (like in winter time in a window facing north
here in Stockholm, Sweden) the leaves may turn darker
green. In fact mine does. All my windows are facing north.
I also have two "fake" varieties, that turned into normal spider plants after a while. The first "fake" I got in december 2001. The second "fake" I got in the summer of 2004.
If anyone that finds this page on the Internet has any other varieties I sure would like a plantlet! Maybe you would want one from me? It has been pointed out to me that it is illegal to send plants from Sweden to the US... (Some people have asked me to do so...)
I have received emails telling me that most varieties, including Bonnie, already exists in the US.
Lately people here in Sweden have been asking for plantlets, which is great, since I want these pretty plants to spread :-)
Green Spider Plant Chlorophytum comosum,
the all green variety with dark green, up to
710 mm long and 30 mm wide leaves. Up to 145 cm long
dark green stolons. Grows fast and
produces many plantlets on several stolons. This is
the variety I get every time I plant seeds from the
white-stripe and reverse banded varieties (I have not
had any success with any of the other varieties yet).
This variety is very common in Sweden, but
I almost never saw it for sale anywhere.
I read on the Internet, on several places actually, that the all green spider plant is not Chlorophytum comosum, but instead Chlorophytum capense, "since there is no all green variety of Chlorophytum comosum", which can't be true since I have bred lots of all green spider plants from seeds from both White-Striped Spider Plant & Reverse Spider Plant.
I have had this variety of spider plant since around 1970. The plant in the photo is many years old, over 15 years, at least.
Here in Sweden this variety is commonly called "helgrön ampellilja".
White-Stripe Spider Plant
Chlorophytum comosum var Vittatum, lighter green leaves with
a white central stripe, sometimes divided into several central white stripes. Leaves are up to 640 mm long
and 23 mm wide. Up to 160 cm long light yellowish beige
stolons. Grows about as fast as the all green
variety and produces about as many stolons and
plantlets. Plants grown from seend are all the green variety. The only way to get more white-striped plants is from plantlets that grows on the stolons.
Extremely common in Sweden (can be bought
in many plant shops). It tends to be a bit smaller than the all green variety but grows just as well. I think this depends on the lack of green in parts of the leaves.
I have had this variety of spider plant since around 1970. The photo shows one of my older plants, it is about 1 meter across. This photo was taken on the 5th of October 2004. The plant in the photo is many years old, over 15 years, at least.
Here in Sweden this variety is commonly called "vanlig ampellilja" eller "vitrandig ampellilja".
Reverse Spider Plant
Chlorophytum comosum var Pictoratum, dark green leaves with
bright yellow edges. Leaves are up to 720 mm long
and 32 mm wide. Up to 162 cm long
dark green stolons. Grows a lot slower than
the all green and the white-stripe varieties and need more light than
those two. In too little light some leaves may turn
almost totally green, the yellow bands first turn light green and the darker green. Produces very
few plantlets, but many seeds and often many stolons. Plants grown from seeds are all the green variety, the only way to get new reverse banded plants is from plantlets on the stolons.
Unusual in Sweden, if not rare. I've never seen this
plant for sale anywhere.
It tends to get just as big as the green variety, if not bigger. It has more green in the leaves than the white-stripe variety, which can explain why it grows big, but I have no explanation to why it grows slower. We call it reverse banded just because the banding is sort of reverse, compared to the white-striped variety.
I have had this variety of spider plant since around 1980. The plant in the photo is many years old, over 15 years, at least.
Here in Sweden this variety is called "felrandad ampellilja" by those who has them.
Variegated Spider Plant
Chlorophytum comosum var Variegatum, lighter green leaves with
white edges with a yellow tinge. This is my "dwarf plant". It has only up
to 80 cm long lighter green stolons.
This is my smallest variety and just fully
grown, the plant is still only just a few years old.
Leaves so far are up to 450 mm long and 16 mm wide. The babies on the stolons often produce its own stolons with new babies, so you can have lots of babies hanging around just one of these plants. I usually remove the stolons on the hanging baby plants since I want to plant them and make them grow into big plants themselves.
I have found that many of the baby plants on the stolons also look a bit different from the other varieties. They often have leaves growing in every direction, but mainly up and down, instead of just upwards, which make them a bit strange in my eyes. The photo to the right shows one of the more extreme baby plants - it even looks like it is upside down.
This variety is uncommon in Sweden, I actually never saw it or even heard of it until I got my plantlets from a friend in the fall in 1998. This variety produces lots of plantlets on its stolons. I have not had any success in trying to grow anything from seeds of this variety.
I have had this variety of spider plant since around 1998. The plant in the photo is around 7 years old.
This variety has no Swedish name, but since it is the smallest variety in Sweden that I know of it could be called "dvärgampellilja".
"Bonnie" Chlorophytum comosum var Bonnie. Bonnie is a variety of Vittatum.
Bonnie is fairly new in this photo, she is much bigger now.
This plant has leaves that are the same colour as the
White-Stripe Spider Plant, with a white central stripe,
but all the leaves are spiral-shaped!
Leaves are up to 470 mm long and 310 mm wide so far.
The longest stolon I have measured so far was only 450 mm long, but it had been cut so it had once been longer. Stolons have same colour as the white-stripe variety, but seems a bit thicker. They are also wavy!
I have had lots of stolons and new plantlets and I readily find new homes for all of them.
I have had this variety of spider plant since the 31th of January 2001.
This variety is called "Bonnie" in Sweden.
This is how my Bonnie plants look today, this photo was taken in September or October 2004.
I have been told that if you give the Bonnie plant more sunlight then the leaves will get more curly. All my windows face north, so you can imagine that the Bonnie plant can have much curlier leaves than mine.
"Laxum".
This variety is called "Chlorophytum c. laxum" on the label on the pot and is from "Gartneriejer Flemming Weber Madsen" (also on the label on the pot). I got my plant from a friend who knows I love spider plants. It is still young, so I have no idea how it will develop. The plant I have is rather dark green with thin yellow stripes along the edges, and it is rather small.
Actually I do not think this is the same species as my other spider plants,
since I can only find about 10 cm long stolons only producing flowers and extremely few baby plants. The plant itself and the roots look more or less the same as the other spider plants, though... But if you examine it more closely you see that the leaves are not attached the same way as in the normal spider plants. It also drink even more water than normal spider plants. Maybe it is a relative?
In the photo to the left is a close-up of the stolon of my first Laxum plant. The stolon is about 10 cm long. You can see a little white flower that is closed, and some buds.
I have had this variety of spider plant since December 2001.
On the 4th of October 2004 I bought a second Laxum plant, it sure looks exactly the same as the first one but it is a bit taller. My new Laxum has up to 370 mm long leaves, same colouration as in the photos, green with white egdes. The width of the leaves is up to 15 mm. The stolons are green, very thin, and up to 220 mm long.
In the photo to the right is the second laxum plant with a small baby plant on its stolon. This photo is taken in June 2005. Now the leaves are still up to 370 mm long, and up to 16 mm wide.
The photo to the right shows a close-up of the Laxum baby plant still on the stolon.
White-Striped Broad-Leaved Spider Plant
This is my first "fake" variety of spider plant. Chlorophytum comosum, same colouration as White-Stripe Spider Plant. This is just a baby I got this summer (2004) that is supposed to get extra wide leaves. It has broader leaves than my normal plants usually have at the same "age", so it will be nice to see how this one develops in the future.
Here in Sweden this variety is called "bredbladig ampellilja" by the person I got it from.
Even if this is still a baby plant, its leaves are up to 380 mm long and 18 mm wide already.
This plant has turned into a disappointment, just as the next broad leaved variety. Today it has about 550 mm long leaves, but the leaves are still not wider than 18 mm anywhere.
Green Broad-Leaved Spider Plant
This is my second "fake" variety of spider plant. Chlorophytum comosum, same colouration as Green Spider Plant. This is just a baby I got on the 4th of October 2004 that has extra wide leaves.
It has broader leaves than my normal plants usually have at the same "age", so it will be nice to see how this one develops in the future.
The photo to the left shows this plant and the new Laxum plant. The photo was taken on the 5th of October, the day after I bought them both in a flower shop.
As a baby plant, its leaves was up to 375 mm long and 32 mm wide. But when I had had the plant just a few of months it started getting long, narrow leaves instead. I actually suspect that this plant was treated with some chemical in order to have those broad leaves it had when I bought it.
I have receieved the suggestion that maybe the fake varieties just had been growing under stronger light than I can offer in my windows facing north - but why then have I never met anyone that had as big plants as I have?
The photo to the right shows the White-Striped Broad-Leaved Spider Plant and the Green Broad-Leaved Spider Plant together in the same photo. It turned out that none of these varieties was truly broad-leaved after all. You can clearly seethe extra wide shorter leaves that the green plant had when I bought it, and all the new leaves that are long and narrow.
I have found descriptions of another variety on the Internet, that I have never seen, and I would very much like to see:
Manda's Spider Plant Chlorophytum comosum var Mandaianum, has dark green leaves with yellow central stripe, around 100 to 150 mm long and 12 to 13 mm wide. Up to 60 cm long stolons. Also called Dwarf Spider Plant. In some descriptions it has yellow edges instead of a central yellow stripe.
(Well, of course I want some baby plants of this variety...)
Note: 60 cm is about 2 feet. One inch is about 25 mm. 1 cm is 10 mm. All measurements of my own four varieties are done on my own plants.
The Spider Plant genus Chlorophytum contains maybe 15 species, and maybe some different colour varieties or size varieties of Spider Plants belong to different species within this genus. At least I've read that on the Internet, but I don't really believe in it myself since I've bred one variety from another through seeds. Except for the Laxum, which I do not believe is a true Spider Plant. In turn Chlorophytum belongs to the subfamily Anthericaceae which contains about 20 or 30 genera. Anthericaceae belongs to the family Liliaceae - the Lily family.
All the variegated Spider Plants are chimeras. The way we usually propagate the Spider Plant is from the baby plants on the stolons, which is an examle of asexual reprodution where there is no gamete fusion. Therefore there is no genetic variation and every new generation consists of genetically identical individuals as the parent generation.
This is the reason why you will get all green plants
if you breed new plants from the seeds of variegated
plants. I've tried that with the two older variegated
varieties that I have (White-Striped Spider Plant &
Reverse Spider Plant), only getting all green plants.
I am planning to do that with the Bonnie variety too,
to see if I can get a smaller all green variety! I have
had no success yet, though.
The only way to get more plants looking the same
as the mama plant is to use the baby plants on the
stolons.
I got an email with a question about how you do to
cultivate these plants from seeds. The flowers appears
on the long stems, and if you just leave them some of
them will develop into little green seed pods. There's a close-up of a seed pod from one of my spider plants to the right. The green part of the pod in the photo is 7 mm long. Leave
the pods to dry on the plant, and then you can harvest
the pods and gently pry out the small black seeds. I
have always let these lie during winter in a dry and
dark place. Then i put them in a pot in the spring.
All the seeds have not developed into new plants but
more than half of them, I think about 75 %. I
sometimes find such little seeds on the window sill so
it is likely that these plants can propagate themselves
this way on their own too even if it lives in a small flower pot in your window.
This plant has been cultivated as an indoor plant for 200 years. The plant has very good air cleansing abilities.
Stolon is the name for the long things that you can find flowers and plantlets on. That name is what is used in books, I really don't know what else to call it.
The Spider Plant is a very common and popular plant and thus it is known under many different names, like the names Airplane Plant and Ribbon Plant. I guess they are known under a lot of other names too, since it is a common plant.
Copyright: Eva Johansson.
Last update: 29th of February 2008.