Monstera
Monstera deliciosa
Huge leathery leaves, slit and holed as the plant matures, thrown out on aerial roots that go looking for something to lean on.
- Type
- Houseplant · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Sunlight
- Bright indirect light, and it copes with less.
- Watering
- Water once the top 3–4 cm of soil have dried.
- Feeding
- A monthly feed from spring through summer.
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Pruning
- Take off yellowing leaves, and shorten aerial roots when they get in the way.
- Mar–Dec Spring Growth
- Jan–Mar Spring Growth
- Plant spacing
- 2 ft 11 in
- In-row spacing
- 2 ft 11 in
- Between rows
- 3 ft 8 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Aerial roots: it does not root in soil at all
- Spread
- 3–4.5 ft across, about 1–1.5× the width of the plant
In the wild these roots grip bark and take water and air straight from the atmosphere, and they suffocate in potting compost. Bark, moss, or a mount with nothing around it is the right footing; a pot of soil is what kills them.
The thick aerial roots are how it climbs in the wild, and they will grip a moss pole given one. Guide them back into the pot or onto the pole rather than cutting them off: they feed the plant as well as hold it.
The habit is Monstera’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 carries this one species under several common names; both rows read Monstera deliciosa and both name dogs and cats.
- Mealybugs Mealybug tucked into the leaf axils
- Scale insects Scale insects along the stems and under the leaves
- Spider mites Red spider mite once the air dries out
- Bacterial leaf spot Bacterial leaf spot, showing as water-soaked patches
- Root & crown rot Root rot after too much water — yellow leaves above, mushy roots below
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- 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.
- 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.
- Hoverfly Syrphidae
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.
- 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.
- 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.
Houseplants, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com