Recommend growing this flower, beautiful in both foliage and bloom with a rich fragrance and flowers in all four seasons, as a replacement for pothos and spider plant

Introduction

Green plants and potted plants are essential accents for home life. Keeping some flowers and plants at home has many benefits: it beautifies the home and pleases the mood. "Flower Sound Potted Plant Diary · Issue 1164" introduces you to a new type of indoor potted plant.

Today's featured plant

In Chinese there is an idiom called "blooming flowers bring prosperity," expressing people's longing for a happy and fulfilling life, wealth and nobility. Keeping some flowering plants at home is not only ornamental but also carries good meaning, while traditional potted plants such as pothos and spider plant clearly cannot satisfy this and can only serve as foliage plants. The flower introduced in this issue can not only be grown indoors, but also blooms very readily, and the flowers are extremely fragrant.

Iron Footboard

In South China we generally call this flower "Iron Footboard." It was originally a kind of "wild grass" living under the trees in tropical and subtropical forests. Later, because the flowers were so beautiful, it was developed into an ornamental flower and named "wax flower" (Hoya). It is naturally distributed in Yunnan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Taiwan, China and other places, while elsewhere it is cultivated artificially. Its flower shape is peculiar, like a round ball, with vivid colors and a crystal-clear look, so beautiful it seems like a fake flower.

Extremely long flowering period

Plants from the tropics generally have very long flowering periods, such as hibiscus and bougainvillea, which can bloom almost all year round. In South China, Iron Footboard also blooms in all four seasons. In northern regions, when grown indoors in winter and given sufficient light time, it will also bloom normally in winter, with an extremely long ornamental period. What is even more rare is that its flowers also give off a very rich fragrance, similar to the sweet scent of honey. Grown on a balcony, when the flowers bloom the whole house is filled with floral fragrance.

Super easy to grow

Iron Footboard has thick leaves and stays evergreen all year round. It is essentially a succulent plant and is very easy to cultivate. Break off a section of stem and insert it into potting soil and it will survive; its vitality is very tough. It also has low requirements for fertilizer and water. My green-leaf pink-flower one is placed on the north balcony, and even now in summer I water it once a week and occasionally apply a little dilute fertilizer. Its condition is excellent, and the flower buds have not dropped from spring until now, one after another, offering both flowers to admire and fragrance to enjoy.

An excellent balcony potted plant

Although Iron Footboard likes light, it is also very shade-tolerant. In ordinary care, a little scattered light is enough to meet its needs for growth and flowering, and growing it indoors is completely fine. It is a perennial climbing plant that will climb walls. Make a flower frame to guide it up the wall, and it can cover it in one or two years, growing very fast. There are many varieties of Iron Footboard. Those suitable for beginners include the green-leaf series, the mirror-leaf series, and the variegated creeping types, all of which are beautiful, easy to grow, and bloom very readily.