Dieffenbachia
Dieffenbachia seguine
Takes a dimmer corner than most large-leaved plants will, and asks only that you wear gloves whenever you cut it.
- Type
- Houseplant · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Variegated with white · Green
- Sunlight
- Bright indirect light, though it copes with less than most large-leaved plants.
- Watering
- Moderate; let the top layer dry before watering again.
- Feeding
- A balanced liquid feed once a month in spring and summer.
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Pruning
- Take off yellowing lower leaves, and cut leggy stems back with gloves on.
- Mar–Dec Spring Growth
- Jan–Mar Spring Growth
- Plant spacing
- 19.7 in
- In-row spacing
- 19.7 in
- Between rows
- 2 ft 1 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
- 10–20 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 Dieffenbachia’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
- Recorded toxic
Recorded as toxic to cats and dogs by ASPCA.
The ASPCA row names the genus only. Our catalog names Dieffenbachia seguine, so the match is at genus level.
- Mealybugs Mealybug, showing as white cottony clumps in the leaf axils and on the stems
- Spider mites Spider mites: stippled, yellowing leaves and fine webbing once conditions dry out
- Bacterial leaf spot Bacterial leaf spot: water-soaked patches edged in brown
- Root & crown rot Root rot from overwatering into compost that drains badly
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea
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.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) Coccinellidae
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.
- Big-eyed bug Geocoris spp.Hunts Spider mites
A stubby 3 mm bug with enormous wrap-around eyes, working the soil surface and the low foliage for aphids, mites, thrips and insect eggs. It is the main natural check on chinch bugs in a lawn and it is killed outright by insecticide.
- 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.
- Minute pirate bug Orius spp.Hunts Spider 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 Spider 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.
- Rove beetle StaphylinidaeHunts Spider mites
Slim, quick beetles with short wing cases that hunt in soil and litter, taking root-fly eggs and larvae, fungus-gnat larvae, and mites. Mulch and undisturbed ground keep them resident year-round.
Green-leaved houseplants, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com