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Plant of the Week
Peace Lily, Spath
Latin: Spathiphyllum x 'Clevelandii'
We gardeners have a tendency of wanting it all. Not only do we want
houseplants that will grow well in almost any situation, but we want them to
flower too. The venerable peace lily fits this description nicely and is also
easy to grow.
The peace lily tribe, a member of the philodendron family, consists of about 35
species of rhizomatous herbs from northern South America and Central America.
Clevelandii is the most common peace lily in cultivation, with glossy green
leaves about 12 inches long and 2 inches wide. The leaves are produced on
footlong petioles from the much-branched rhizome. The rhizome is a creeping stem
which grows horizontally at the soil surface, not upright like most stems.
Flowers, which can be produced at any season, are white, with a finger-like
knobby spath extending from the base of the showy white spadix, which is usually
4 to 6 inches long. The common name is from the universally acknowledged white
flag of truce during battles.
I find no mention of when or where the Spathiphyllums were first cultivated, so
I suspect they were part of the swarm of "stove plants" the Victorians grew
during the middle and later half of the last century. This selection is of
hybrid origin and appears to have been produced some time during the second or
third decade of this century. In the past five years, German plant breeders have
introduced over a dozen new selections of spathiphyllum into the Florida foliage
market. Clevelandii, the old workhorse of this group, will probably become less
common as these newer, more free-flowering hybrids become better known.
For over 50 years, plant physiologists have been searching for a universal plant
hormone that triggers flowering, but so far their search for this "holy grail,"
which has already been given the name "florigen," has been futile. It seems to
be that flowering is controlled by the balance of existing plant hormones, not a
single hormone. In spathiphyllum the hormone gibberellic acid (GA) has been
shown to cause flowering.
Left to their own devices spathiphyllum will flower but usually only a few
blooms are produced at any one time and the timing is erratic. But, by using a
GA spray, growers can control flowering precisely with blooms appearing about
two months after spraying.
Peace lilies tolerate very low light, down to 20 foot candles, but at such low
levels they probably will not flower. To encourage peace lilies to bloom in the
home, plants should be located in areas bright enough to read a newspaper. They
should be kept away from cold drafts and maintained uniformly moist with
fertilizer applied monthly during the spring and summer using one of the liquid
houseplant fertilizers.
Never allow these plants to sit in standing water. Repot only when plants begin
to crowd their container and are difficult to keep watered. Mealybugs are the
only common pest of this tough houseplant, and they are not commonly
encountered.
By: Gerald Klingaman, retired
Extension Horticulturist
- Ornamentals
Extension News -
December 3, 1999
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