African Violet
Streptocarpus sect. Saintpaulia
also called saintpaulia
Small enough for any sill, and fussy in only one way: water goes to the soil, never onto the leaves.
- Type
- Houseplant · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Purple and violet · Yellow
- Sunlight
- Bright but indirect light; keep it out of direct sun.
- Watering
- Water from below, using water at room temperature.
- Feeding
- A specialty African violet fertilizer every two weeks while it is in flower.
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Flowering
- March
- Pruning
- Take off spent flowers and any damaged leaf.
- Mar–Mar Spring Growth
- Mar–Dec Flowering
- Jan–Mar Flowering
- Plant spacing
- 7.9 in
- In-row spacing
- 7.9 in
- Between rows
- 9.8 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Fibrous, and content in a pot
- Working depth
- 6–14 in
- Can reach
- 24 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 4–8 in across, about 0.5–1× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 8 in of soil
It spends its life in a pot, so the pot is the whole root run. Move it up one size when roots show at the drainage holes, and remember that it can never go looking for water it has not been given.
The habit is African Violet’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Cats and dogs
- Confirmed safe
We say a plant is safe only where a named poison-control reference names that exact species and records it as non-toxic to both cats and dogs. Most plants are on nobody’s list, and their absence here is not a judgement about them. This is a record of what those references say, not veterinary advice, and it cannot account for your own animal, the quantity eaten, or a plant treated with anything.
The ASPCA row names the old genus Saintpaulia only, and our own catalog names the same whole group (Streptocarpus sect. Saintpaulia), so the two are the same statement.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carneaHunts Mealybugs
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Mealybugs
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Mealybugs
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Minute pirate bug Orius spp.Hunts Broad & cyclamen mites
A pinhead-sized true bug that is the best natural check on thrips, and happily spears aphids, mites, and insect eggs too. It needs pollen when prey is scarce, so keep something flowering nearby.
- Predatory mites Phytoseiulus & AmblyseiusHunts Broad & cyclamen mites
Fast orange mites that hunt spider mites egg-by-egg, and cousins that clear thrips and fungus-gnat larvae. Sold as a biological control for greenhouses; outdoors they follow humidity — mist and mulch, don’t dust with sulfur.
Green-leaved houseplants, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com