Ponytail palms, or elephant foot palms, are unique-looking, long-lived indoor vegetation that thrive on benign neglect. They’re easy to develop—supplied that you simply don’t overwater them! Right here’s easy methods to develop and look after a ponytail palm in your house.
About Ponytail Palms
Regardless of its identify and palm-like look, the ponytail palm will not be a real “palm.” The truth is, it’s extra carefully associated to abandon vegetation within the Agave and Yucca genera (corresponding to Joshua bushes).
The everyday ponytail palm consists of a giant, domed “stump,” which tapers off right into a thinner stem. Because the plant ages, a number of rosettes of lengthy, inexperienced, leathery leaves develop from the highest of the stem. Indoors, the leaves can attain as much as 3 toes lengthy, however outside, they might be double that size.
In its native setting (jap Mexico), your complete plant has been recognized to achieve as much as 30 toes in top! Nevertheless, ponytail palms grown in gardens as panorama vegetation don’t normally attain greater than 10 toes tall.
Saved indoors, they’re hardly ever taller than 4 toes. Nevertheless, as Susan Mahr of the College of Wisconsin-Madison explains, “In containers, ponytail palms will develop slower than if within the floor, and the vegetation will stay small if stored in a small pot. They will go for a few years earlier than needing to be repotted. Shifting it to a bigger pot will give it room to develop in each top and girth. They are often very long-lived and may simply outlive their homeowners. Nevertheless, older vegetation could also be tough to handle due to sheer dimension and weight if not stored on the smaller dimension.”
Care of this plant is mostly easy; the commonest problem is adapting your watering habits to its wants!
