A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 clean air houseplants

For all of those that have a significant other who shakes their head when you have yet another plant in your hand, here's a list of plants that clean the air so you can convince them you are helping improve the quality of life in your home. According to joint studies by NASA and Associated Landscape Contractors of America they estimate that a group of 15 to 20 of the plants listed below can remove harmful pollutants from the interior of an 1800 sqft house.

Bamboo palm (Chamaedorea erumpens)
Chinese evergreen (Aglaonema spp.)
Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum sp.)
Dracaena (Dracaena sp.)
English Ivy (Hedera helix)
Ficus (Ficus sp.)
Gerbera daisy (Gerbera jamesonii)
Golden pathos (Epipremnum aureum)
Mother-in-law's tongue (Sansevieria trifasciata)
Peace lily (Spathiphyllum sp.)
Philodendron (Philodendron sp.)
Spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum)

This is taken from Gardening How-to magazine, January/February issue.

So how many do you have??

Corn plant, Ficus and Spider plant

http://www.colormegreenco.com/NASA/nasa2.htm

Study can be found at this location!

Thanks Gardengal, I'm printing that list and showing it to my husband tonight. Finally, I have a weapon !

I've got 3 different species of dracaena, an english ivy and a philodendron.

Yea! An excuse for my plant collection!

Let's see, I have...

One english ivy
Three philo's
Seven (or more) spider plants
and four golden pothos



Okay...that's kinda scary...I'm NOT counting the rest!

Surely someone out there collects more that me!?!?!

as of friday... i will have 3 of one kind of dracaena and one of another.
2 different spiders,
2 kinds of philo's,
a pothos,
a peace lily,

AND
about 8-10 other plants...

so, you see barley, you aren't the only one!!!

Oh well, now, if we're counting...

I've got ( right now ) a total of 18, plus a cutting from a schefflera that I hope will root soon.

I'm sure the air in my house is really clean...

Ha ha! At last count I had at last 80 but I bet there's over 100 now and that's not counting baby's and plants that I have rescued for garbage shelf at work that are being nursed back!

Oh wait! We are just talking air cleaning plants... Well alot of them are but I don't have a Chrysanthemum or a planted Gerbera daisy but I have some cut flowers of these I brought home from work today!

Liz!!!!!
Holy tam-ol-ee....100??? In the house????
My hero!!!!!

The kids are two small so I can't have any floor plants just, crazy little dirt diggers just can't keep there hands out! But I have plans, big plans... open up top half of some walls and making planters at about 4' off the floor! I also still don't have any plants in two rooms!
There are plants out there that I don't have yet, but I will!

That just reminded me about my son when he was 3 years old.

He had a friend over and was playing very nicely with this friend in the living room while the mom and I were sitting in the dinning room. We could see the children through the door that was half way open. We could see that they were walking back and forth across the door.

What we couldn`t see was that they were systematically covering every inch of the living room with handfuls of potting soil! We never laughed so hard. Luckily the soil was dry and easily vacuumed up.

Too funny!

Well, my plant collection isn't as impressive as Liz's, I think I have around the 40ish range at this point. As for air cleaning ones I have,
1 spider plant(with lots of babies!!)
3 Ivy
5 Dracaena
1 Philo
A pothos is definetly on my shopping list, but they are sooo big and difficult to sneak into the house! But I did manage to sneak in a jade plant today. The smaller ones just blend in with all the rest.
I think my olive tree is about my most unusual plant. Does anyone else have some really different ones? And what would they be?? Just being nosy again!

sherri, the key to sneaking in a pothos is to find one to take a cutting of. he won't mind "just a few leaves" and before you know it, you will have the most gorgeous plant, and he won't remember you "bringing" it in!

Do pothos really grow that fast? Because that would be ideal! I have about 7 cups full of snippits and cutting in my kitchen and I'm not sure if he has ever even looked at them!

For more complete and somewhat surprising information about the relative air-cleaning abilities of plants, I will e-mail my article on this subject to anyone who sends a request to me at wcreed@HorticulturalHelp.com