Air plant
Tillandsia ionantha
also called tillandsia
Grows clinging rather than rooted, with no soil involved — and it drowns as readily as it dries, so nothing is ever left standing.
- Type
- Houseplant · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Blue-green · Silver and gray
- Sunlight
- Part shade
- Feeding
- All-purpose balanced
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Flowering
- June
- Mar–Jun Spring Growth
- Jun–Dec Flowering
- Jan–Mar Flowering
- Plant spacing
- 5.9 in
- In-row spacing
- 5.9 in
- Between rows
- 7.5 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Aerial roots: it does not root in soil at all
- Spread
- 6–9 in 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.
An air plant has roots only to hold on with, and takes all its water and food through scales on the leaves. Never pot one: soak it, shake it out and put it back on its perch.
The habit is Air plant’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.
- Mealybugs Mealybug down in the leaf bases
- Scale insects Scale insects between the leaves
- Root & crown rot Root rot where a plant is left sitting in water
- Brown leaf tips when the air is too dry
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- 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.
- 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 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.
Houseplants, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com