Today I bring you a plant that I have had for a long time, it is a decorative plant very easy to care for, as well as beautiful, and I think many people have one at home. Today I will introduce you to my Chlorophytum comosum, or as I prefer to call it: Love Bow. More than anything, in this post I will share my experience taking care of this beautiful plant and some things I learned on my own, that's what I like the most about this: learning every day. Anyway, here we go!
As I told you before, I've had this plant for quite some time. Actually it belonged to my mom, but since she could not give it the care it needed, because she was too busy, she left it to me so that I could take care of watering it from time to time. However, it wasn't until I got my succulent (Darley Sunshine, I'm pretty sure that's her name), that I started to really pay attention to my bond of love.
The plant was awful, I had never noticed it before, but its leaves were pale, and the pot seemed to be squeezing its roots, so I did what I had to do. A belief I have with most things, is that if something is no good, let it go and start over; perhaps this philosophy applies to many aspects of life, but I tend to apply it to plants as well.
When I saw this plant so sad and devoid of color, I decided to pull everything out of the pot and separate all the individual stems. The roots were very long, so with a clean pair of scissors, I cut the roots off the stems that looked the healthiest, the ones that were too dry I discarded. I got new soil and took on the task of replanting this plant. I thought about how suffocated it must have felt, besides the fact that the soil was already horrible because of the time I had spent with it. Furthermore, I don't have any photos of this whole process, as I tell you that it was when I was not yet in Hive. I didn't use to take many photos of my plants, nor of anything but the sky.
In the end, the story ends well, the plant surprisingly recovered. Thanks to the passage of time, and proper care, the leaves began to turn green more and more, and not only that, but began to grow many more leaves, and then flowers. And this is where I want to explain how this beautiful plant is propagated. But first, I leave you a picture of how it looks like nowadays this Love Bow I'm talking about…
This photo is from today.
Propagation
It is very interesting, because it is propagated from long stems that emerge from the plant, called stolons. I don't know if in the photo you can see that white stem coming out of the center, but it is a stolon. These usually appear when the plant has matured and is in favorable conditions, they usually take 1 to 2 years to appear.
At the tip of these stolons, usually grow small delicate white flowers, they are beautiful; a miniature beauty.
As you can see, there are also a lot of leaves, similar to a love ribbon plant, in miniature; and exactly that is what they are, these are the offspring or shoots of this plant.
These seedlings, if you look at them from underneath, are starting to develop small roots underneath. I took some photos of this root growth, what I find most amazing, is that they are practically aerial roots.
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The photos are from when they started growing vs how they were before I planted them. At the time I had planned to take more, but the growth is quite slow and almost unnoticeable. They took about a month to develop proper enough roots to be successfully planted.
This brings us to the next step, but first, I'll tell you something else.
It turns out that my mom had not one love ribbon plant, but two. One was in the yard, which is where I have my little garden now, and the other was in the front yard of the house.
Well it so happens that one day I went out to the front yard and I found THIS.
I don't know how my mom's plant got to that point, but I spent two weeks trying to water it more frequently (sometimes she would go two days without watering them, which bothered me a lot because she doesn't pay attention to her plants, and they depend on us. Anyway, after this, she became aware and now takes more care of them), but the damage was done, the plant showed no more signs of life.
Well, with this sad story, comes the last step in the propagation of the Love Bow plants.
The first thing I did was to pull the plant out and remove the soil. I had intended to take the healthiest stem and reseed it, but nope.
I decided to finally cut off the stolon tillers, from my love ribbon plant.
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Look at those little roots.
Finally, I planted them.
In summary, to propagate a love ribbon plant, once wait for it to mature until the stolons appear, then the flowers, then the tillers, and finally, wait for the tillers to develop roots fit enough to be planted.
After there are roots, we cut the tillers from the stolons, with clean scissors to avoid bacteria. And we plant them in the soil as you would do with any plant.
I leave you with some photos of the growth of these new Love Bow seedlings, which I took over a period of approximately three months, but I don't have a record of the date of each photo.
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I had forgotten to tell you, there was a third offspring on my Love Bow plant, but it had not yet developed roots, so I left it attached to the plant. Then I saw that it was ready for planting, so I included it with the new **Love Bow ** plants.
I feel that the whole explanation is a bit confusing because you may not understand which plant is which, so I will name each one. The older one I'll call Luna, and the younger one I'll call Estela, so you won't get confused when I talk about each one, hehehehe. Following this, I planted one of Luna's offspring in Estela's pot, you can tell it's been a while because Estela has grown a bit, can you see it in the second picture?
You can also see a couple of Luna's flowers, in the third image, how beautiful.
Here Luna gave a fourth offspring, which I happily planted in Estela's pot. I really like the way the love ties grow, like little bushes, also called rosettes.
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Growing more and more.
And finally, a picture of today, what do you think?
Knowing how easy it is to propagate these plants, we now continue with the care that I give to the plant, which I learned on my own. Make a note:
Care
About the amount of sunlight: they prefer bright indirect light, and they are also very suitable to be kept indoors, for a reason I will mention later. In conclusion, these plants are shade plants, so to speak. I keep them in the shade, without letting the light shine on them, just as I do with the caladiums.
There was a time when I had them in partial shade, but Luna started to weaken and wilt, so I don't let the sun shine on them anymore.
About watering: water moderately, only when you notice that the soil is dry, this plant does not tolerate waterlogging. I barely water them a trickle of water a day. If you water too much, their roots can rot and die.
About the soil: make sure it is a soil that can drain easily, they also prefer soil that has organic matter. I added some trunk bark to the soil to provide nutrients. About drainage, it is important that the pots have holes, and that the soil is not too “heavy”.
And basically that would be all the care that this beautiful plant needs, very easy, right?
Ah, I told you that it was good to have it indoors, so let's go with the
Benefits
It turns out that I found out something very interesting, this plant has the ability to improve air quality, that's why it's good to have it indoors. It removes toxins from the air such as formaldehyde, xylene, and toluene (source). Many times I had been told that it was bad to have plants inside the house, due to the production of carbon dioxide, but it is good to know that there are plants that improve our life in this way.
A beautiful plant that should not be missing in your home, beautiful, easy to care for and with health benefits. Now you know more about the Love Bow.
Without anything else to add, hope you enjoyed the post. Take care, drink water, and don't forget to smile, I love you, see you in the next post, bye!
Credits | Créditos
- English translation DeepL (sorry for any mistakes, I don't know much English)
- Traducción al inglés DeepL (lo siento por cualquier error, no sé mucho inglés.)
- Dividers, and banners made in Canva
- Separadores y banners hechos en Canva
- Photos used in the post were taken by me, using a Samsung Galaxy J6
- Las fotos usadas en el post fueron tomadas por mí, usando un Samsung Galaxy J6