Over the past few years, there has been a veritable explosion in houseplant popularity. Already steadily on the rise, houseplant sales grew 50% to $1.7 billion in 2019. Then COVID-19 happened and the demand for indoor flora went absolutely bananas.
With popularity come the plant influencers, the monthly plant subscription services, and the rare plant auctions where prices can fetch tens of thousands for a small specimen or cutting. We’ve now got status plants, the Philodendron Pink Princesses and Albino Monsteras of recent memory that commanded a price tag in the triple digits at the height of the craze.
As of 2021, the annual sale of houseplants – and houseplant accessories – is more than a $2 billion dollar industry in the US. In the effort to bring more first-time plant parents into the fold, some in the horticulture industry have resorted to cheap tricks and marketing gimmicks to drive up sales.
“We are altering the plant. Pray we do not alter it further.”
In the houseplant section of big box stores, you might’ve noticed some unnatural additions to our naturally beautiful greens.
Racks of the already gorgeous and colorful poinsettia, doused in glitter. Prickly barrel cacti in tiny clay pots with fake flowers hot-glued to their crowns. Tillandsia air plants coated in bioluminescent compounds so the leaves glow in the dark. Dwarf cypresses heavily flocked with artificial snow, just in time for the holidays. Cylindrical snake plants with the tips of their thick spears dipped in velvety neon dyes. Phalaenopsis orchids injected with pigment so their flowers appear blue.
Impossibly bright and bold hues are meant to stop you in your tracks and take notice. Like moths to a light, we are instinctually attracted and allured by vivid colors. And so, popping up on retailer shelves since 2013, a new lineup of succulents and cacti arrived on the scene, coming in a range of fluorescent red, orange, yellow, pink, purple, and blue.
What’s this, some new exotic? Or maybe a genetic modification? Or years and years of selective breeding? Nope. The poor things have been dipped in paint.
What’s the Harm in Painted Leaves?
There’s so much to be bothered by with this painted plant fad:
Firstly, it blocks photosynthesis.
It’s often succulents like Echeveria and Haworthia and the occasional cactus variety, getting covered in paint. These are easy care, low maintenance, beginner houseplants that grow slowly and hail from dry and sunny desert environments.
As desert natives, succulents have a special adaptation that allows them to photosynthesize differently than most other plants. Using a process called Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM), they soak in the sun’s rays during the daytime, as per usual, but keep their leaf pores tightly closed to reduce water loss in their hot and arid habitats. In CAM plants, the leaf stomata open up only at night, when temperatures are cooler, to take in carbon dioxide and accomplish photosynthesis. Despite using a unique process, CAM plants still need sunlight – and plenty of it.
Obviously, multiple layers of paint will create a physical barrier that interferes with the plant’s ability to absorb sunlight. With the leaf surface shrouded by a heavy coat of paint, plants are unable to carry out the all-important process of photosynthesis and convert light into the energy they need to grow.
Although they are hardy houseplants and tolerant of some neglect, succulents smothered in paint are at a major disadvantage for growing, and growing well. Odds are, the plants dipped in paint are doomed to die.
It’s not exactly clear what you’re buying.
The most widespread painted succulent brand is Kosmik Kaktus by Altman Plants. The label states that the otherworldly look is achieved with “colors specially formulated for plant life”. It also claims that “the artificial coloring does not harm the plant.”
Nowhere on the plant tag does it disclose that the succulents have been slapped in paint to create such outrageous hues. But with a little internet sleuthing, I came upon photos taken by an employee at one of these commercial-scale greenhouses where the plants get painted. According to the Reddit post, it’s literally just someone dunking the succulents in buckets of oil-based paint. They dip the plants multiple times, too, for complete paint coverage.
If nothing else, the companies using paint to color plants should be honest about it. Calling it “coloring” certainly downplays the matter and it’s doubtful that the paints are in any way developed specifically for plants.
It’s awfully wasteful.
With nary a green leaf in sight, the cheerful colors on top obscure what’s really happening below the surface. Hampered by the lack of photosynthesis, along with the inability for the leaves to breathe, most painted succulents and cacti are destined for a slow, drawn-out demise.
When a neon-coated succulent dies, it’s not only your money that’s wasted. All the resources that brought it into being – from the plastic pots, to the ingredients of the potting mix, to the water and energy needed to grow them, to the manufacturing of the paint, to the cost of transporting them across the country so they can be plopped on retailer shelves – are squandered too. Not to mention, the amount of dead painted plants that end up in the landfill.
Truth be told, every indoor gardener is going to have more than a few houseplants die on them. I’ve lost count of how many have perished under my care over the course of 20 some-odd years. It happens, we grieve the loss, and hopefully learn something from it. But what makes painted houseplants so exceptionally wasteful is that, from the very outset, they are set up to fail. Like cranking up the difficulty in care to the max setting, what would normally be a long-lived houseplant now has a considerably shorter shelf life. And if you want that intense color, you would need to purchase them again and again.
3 Tips for Keeping Painted Plants Alive
Whether you got taken in by the ruse or were gifted one by a well-meaning friend, there are a few things you can do to increase the odds that your painted plant survives.
Given enough time and the right care, the succulents will revert back to their original forms. But the painted plants will need a little help from you to get there.
1. Remove Paint with Rubbing Alcohol
Removing at least some of the paint is necessary for plants to properly photosynthesize and exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide through their leaves.
Rubbing alcohol is the gentlest organic solvent for removing oil paint. It works by breaking the bond between the paint and the leaf surface, without harming the living flesh of the plant.
Take a cotton swab or a clean rag, dip it in rubbing alcohol and gently rub away the paint on the leaf surface. Use a very light amount of pressure to avoid damaging the foliage. Once the paint is gone, use a damp cloth to wipe away any residual alcohol.
It’s time-consuming but the more leaves you can expose to light, the stronger and healthier the plant will be.
As the paint is cleared away, you’ll begin to see the plant as nature intended. Cactus restored to a healthy shade of green, Echeveria revealing rosettes of blue-green leaves, and Haworthia spines striped and dotted in white. All quite fetching, au naturel.
2. Pinch off Painted Leaves
A quicker – but far more drastic – approach is to remove paint by pinching off one or two succulent leaves, down to the base of the stem. This will uncover part of the unpainted inner rosette, now able to take a bit more sunshine.
Pinching off leaves is stressful to the plant, so it’s best to do it sparingly. Give the plant time to recover between pruning jobs, and only take one or two leaves at a time.
You can, of course, remove older, shriveled leaves at any point. This, too, will let in more light to the naked core.
3. A Little Extra TLC
Although painted Haworthia and Echeveira have gotten a bad start in life, they are remarkably tough houseplants. Since being smothered in paint, the plants are likely malnourished and stressed, but we can make it up to them by giving them the very best in care.
When choosing a suitable spot for your painted succulent to recover, think desert conditions: sunny, warm, and dry. Locate your plant in your brightest window, in a warm spot where temperatures never drop below 55°F (12°C), and away from bathrooms and kitchens and other places where humidity is high.
Cacti and succulents have few demands, but one deal-breaker is too-frequent watering. These plants would go months without rain in the desert and are uniquely adapted to drought. With that in mind, let the soil dry between waterings and irrigate only when the top few inches of soil are dry to the touch. Also consider repotting the plant in a clay pot with drainage holes to help wick away excess moisture.
Naturally Vibrant Alternatives to Painted Succulents
The craziest part of the whole painted plant trend is that there are already so many strikingly colorful succulents you could be growing.
The succulent family – with 10,000 known species, and counting – is a truly diverse group of plants with highly unusual shapes and growing habits. Apart their drought tolerance and ease of care, another thing that sets succulents apart from others in the indoor garden is foliage color.
Naturally vibrant or bred for the boldest hues, there’s abundant choice in extraordinary (and real!) colors and patterns within the succulent community:
Reds and Oranges:
- Sticks on Fire (Euphorbia tirucalli)
- Paddle Plant (Kalanchoe luciae)
- Golden-Toothed Aloe (Aloe nobilis)
- Red Aloe (Aloe cameronii)
- Fire and Ice (Echeveria subrigida ‘Fire and Ice’)
- Campfire Plant (Crassula capitella)
- Dragon’s Blood (Phedimus spurius ‘Dragon’s Blood’)
Yellows:
- Coppertone Stonecrop (Sedum nussbaumerianum)
- Sunset Jade (Crassula ovata ‘Sunset’)
- Sunburst Aeonium (Aeonium ‘Sunburst’)
- Bronze Graptosedum (Graptosedum ‘Bronze’)
Pinks and Purples:
- Morning Light Echeveria (Echeveria ‘Morning Light’)
- Santa Rita Prickly Pear (Opuntia ‘Santa Rita’)
- Purple Beauty (Sempervivum tectorum ‘Purple Beauty’)
- Baby’s Necklace (Crassula rupestris ‘Baby’s Necklace’)
- Chroma (Echeveria ‘Chroma’)
- Pink Champagne (Echeveria ‘Pink Champagne’)
- Ruby’s Necklace (Othonna capensis ‘Ruby’s Necklace’)
- Pink Moonstone (Pachyphytum oviferum ‘Pink Moonstone’)
- Lavender Scallops (Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi)
Blues:
- Blue Glow Agave (Agave ‘Blue Glow’)
- Blue Chalksticks (Senecio serpens)
- Cheyenne (Echeveria ‘Cheyenne’)
- Blue Carpet Sedum (Sedum hispanicum ‘Blue Carpet’)
Shades of Black or White:
- Black Beauty (Aeonium arboreum ‘Zwartkop’)
- Black Knight (Echeveria affinis ‘Black Knight’)
- Wooly Senecio (Senecio haworthii)
- Giant Chalk Dudleya (Dudleya brittonii)
- Ghost Plant (Graptopetalum paraguayense)
You see, breaking up the indoor greenery with stunning colors can be accomplished without the use of paint. Not only will these succulents be a whole lot happier since they can photosynthesize normally, the vivid colors of their foliage will actually endure and deepen as they grow – unlike their painted counterparts.
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