For me, I really dont like the look of pileas and spider plant...

why??? fiddle leaf fig looks so beautiful

I’d take a spider plant over a fiddle leaf any day for an indoor plant. Far more elegant imo.

im talking about appearance here and not care... why would you want spider plant when fiddle leaf fig looks better?

Mike, thats your personal opinion, not the general consensus.

I too dislike Ficua Lyrata as my number one least favorite plant.

First due to looks. It has ugly giant leaves yet everyone wants it to look like that classic tree shape when that’s far from how it wants to naturally grow. Benjamina and Alii look 1000x better.

Second, it’s just over played.

Not a fan of spider plants but my wife likes hers so We have 4 of them.

yes, spider plants leaves are just all over the place. it is not so tidy as other plants like fiddle leaf fig. they look so dirty in my opinion...

Mike,

We all get it, you think FLF are the best looking plants in the world. Ok.

Not it everyone feels the same way. Please understand.

theres no point in comparing a spider plant to an FLF. Two totally different types of plants that have completely different looks.

ZZ and Sanseveria

Lithops and Fiddle Leaf Figs. Blegh!

None. I go through phases of liking and wanting something because of variety of reasons. And for a variety of reasons I may not feel as strongly later. So I give it away or sometimes even sell them.

Spider plant looks like grass. At least grass grows upright.
I wasnt a fan of zz and sanveseria too after looking at them for a long time i became fine with them.
And yes! Lithops!!! I dont even think they are a plant.

I don't too much care about fame or Instagram trends.

@hibiscus909 i cant help but get annoyed by instagrammers posting some plants as a must have houseplant...

here are top 10 of my least favorite plants people are trying to make famous
1. Pilea peperomoides
2. Spider plant
3. Croton
4. Arrowhead
5. Lithops
6. Fittonia
7. Xanadu
8. Pothos
9. Ficus Benjamina
10. Fatsia Japonica

i also dont like diffenbachia

You hate my favorite plant (Pothos) and I hate yours, Mike. Guess this makes us mortal enemies now! (Don't worry, though, I still love you.)

@daxeek lol! i dont hate them as much as I have pileas and spider plants. those two I dislike so much I would throw them if I see them even if they arent mine.

have you tried growing pothos upright instead of hanging? i like the leaves but they cant keep themselves within the pot haha

No one is trying to make Ficus Benjamina famous, unless you’re talking about the 1970s.

That tree had its day where it was the most popular indoor tree. That day has come and gone a while ago.

This entire thread is pointless!! Of course different people will have different preferences in houseplants, just as they do with outdoor plants. Or even the type of vegetables they prefer to eat!! It has nothing to do with instagram or any other popular social media trying to make plants 'famous' - that's just utter rot!! There are certainly fads and trends with houseplants just like there is with anything else.....right now those seem to lean towards FLF's and succulents. But that will also change over the coming years. And many houseplant growers pay no attention to any fads or trends anyway and simply grow what they like.

btw, there is no such word as "hatest". The correct terminology would be 'hated' or 'most hated'.

Mike is just trying to tell everyone he hates Spider plants and loves Ficus Lyrata. The latter which we all knew.

Agreed, there isn’t any point for this thread. Let’s talk about plants we like, not plants we hate.

I must say I hate any plant that dies on me. The ones that live all have their good and bad points. Spider plants are supposed to be good air cleaners so I keep a few around just because of that and that they are easy to care for. I think the curly one looks the best. FLF I had one and got rid of it. Too needy but I did like the way it looked. It grew for me but I could not give it enough light in the winter with out supplementing it. It would not stand up on its own any more so I ended up giving it away.

Mike, my current Marble Queen used to look like this. Maybe this is more of a look you'd like? :)

Here it is a few months later; they just naturally start to spill out of their pots after a certain point because they aren't made for standing up straight, I suppose? Too much weight on a stem that isn't made for holding it up.

@BD11 I had a corn plant that died on me! I really like it, it was my very first plant ever. I went away for more than a month and when I came back, it wasnt dead yet but it was dry... I watered it and it was shocked and died... I never attempted to grow a corn plant from then on. I know exactly how you feel about plants dying on you.

@daxeek yes that’s the look I am looking for. it looks so nice from your pics! Maybe I can try growing a marble queen! Maybe I can tie it up when it grows so it would keep standing? I really like the leaves on this! I hope I can grow it as a tree!

@gardengal and dave - I was just voicing out some observations, and wanted to chat if people is finding the same weird thing. Sorry if I come across as pushy on people liking FLFs

@daxeek - the first pic looks like a bigger pot than the second

You can't grow a vining plant as a tree. Epipremnums do not develop a trunk that will be self-supporting.

Yeah, definitely couldn't do a tree. Would be cool if you could, though! Also, yes, it was overpotted in the first picture, so I potted it down a few weeks ago. I think it's still recovering from the repot stress, which is why it's drooping a little more than usual.

i wonder if I could get one and keep trimming it to only have 1 leaf per stem so it wont trail down the pot...

Fads are cyclical. Benjamina will be back soon. My mother had a big one for many years in the 80s, and for a long time after that I though of Benjamina as the last generation's houseplant. Ironic considering that that particular species of tree has likely been around for millions of years before we were... In any case, they will be be back once they have faded from our collective memories enough to be new and in vogue again. Put them in a couple model home magazines, and soon we will be answering thousands of posts just like we currently do with our maligned FLFs. There will even be a Jim The Benjamina Guy who bags on the FLFs as the most hated fad plant, while at the same time flooding the site with hundreds of posts about his Benjaminas. By that time Mike will be a veteran grower with years of experience, growing tired of answering those same damned Benjamina posts.

Spider plants are very underwhelming to me. I would like the hawothia cooperi truncata to become popular because it is so neat looking. I would love to be able to buy it locally.

@Matt - it is a different time now, there is instagram already. people make all plants (any kind) famous...

@Danielle - same sentiment as you for spider plants! i hate untidy looking plants too!

do you need to book and buy tickets to go on nursery sales in other parts of the world??? how is your experience plant shopping?

I'm assuming they mean they have to buy that type of Haworthia on the internet if they want them at the moment. (Which, to me at least, is very daunting because you can't choose which specific plant you want, and they don't always survive the trip undamaged!)

Hi Mike,

Thay sounds Pretty fun! Over on YouTube Betsybegonia did a tour of a plant shop in Paris and it was amazing! So many large plants that normally I could only acquire online as a cutting or tiny plant and things I have never seen before. :)

I travel to the Seattle area to visit family about once a year and I want to make a point to visit some plant shops.

occasionally the shops Near me get cool stuff but it’s hit or miss.

here in sydney, people organise plant sales almost every week but of course you need to buy ticket first before you can get in to browse spider plants, peace lilies, basically all the common ones. you would end up buying of course because you dont want your ticket purchase to go on waste.

browsing nurseries overseas seem to be a lot fun tho based on youtube nursery tours. i like betsy begonia, she’s one of the few youtubers who gives realistic advice and not like ‘you’re a newbie you should only grow this and not that’ etc...

You find them online. A bit cheaper than an expedition around the world.

lol if i have money i will travel the world and visit nurseries. it’s my kind of nature trip

My favorite plants change every 5 or 10 years, as I am given something I have never liked or tried to grow, and find they interesting and lovely. I use to find Sans unappealing, but 20 years later they are one of my most loved plants. So, I have learned not to be too passionate about what I don't think I like today, as I think we are all fickle this way if we keep growing plants for years and years.

i cant imagine me being so passionate with spider plant lol!!!

I'm not a fan of sansevierias, gesneriads, orchids, clivias, crassula ovata plants, tradescantias, fittonias, or cyclamen.

@tetra seems like we both have the same taste of plants we hate! fittonias are funny looking!

Mike,

A spider plant is an easy to care for plant, good for beginners. You can stop comparing them to Ficus Lyrata because there’s no point.

A spider plant would have likely been a better first plant for you to get into as well. You could have learned a little through trial and error before buying multiple FLF’s and having issue after issue.

Just saying, while you dont care for their look, they’re a good starter plant.