10 Interesting Non-Toxic Houseplants

hi everyone my name is nick and today we're going to go over 10 interesting plants that are considered non-toxic and pet friendly one of the most common things i'm asked about at the plant shop is about non-toxic plants and people are often commenting if they have pets that they feel like they're very limited on the variety of plants that they can keep in their home now that's totally not true because there are so many incredible non-toxic plants out there so today i'm going to go over 10 specific varieties today so the first one i'm going to go over is primolina sinensis this beautiful fuzzy plant right here and i do want to actually back pedal real quick and say that i'm going to be going over specific varieties or species of plants today but if you kind of move over to the genus of plants so for example primolina is the genus and sinensis is the species but all primolinas are going to be considered non-toxic but i'm just going to be talking about primolina sinensis today so if you're into primolina sinensis or one of the other plants that i'm going to talk about today definitely do some research on the genus the more overall group of plants because i'm just going to be talking about specific varieties or species today anyway so this is primolina sinensis and a very beautiful fuzzy silver plant and this is what they refer to commonly as an asian violet so it's very closely related to uh african violets so they're both gesneriads or they're both in the gesnery aca family and this is a very striking plant i keep this one in my kitchen because every time i'm doing dishes i love to just look at this plant however i do like to keep this plant a little bit further away from the sink because this plant doesn't like necessarily getting cold water on its leaves doesn't necessarily mind warm water but one particular thing about premolina's and many gazinari ads is that they don't love cold water on the leaves so just one thing in particular about this plant so i do tend to water this plant with lukewarm water or warm water and or and if i am doing cold water i which i don't normally water my plants with cold water but i'll just be very careful to not uh get water on the leaves they flower they are a type of flowering plant i do have one in my home a primallina young fluency that is just about to bloom i don't know if it'll be bloomed in time for me to show you it open um in this video but i'm very excited about that but this one i'm more keen on its foliage as you can see it's got that really uh nice silver uh variegation to it as well as just some really nice fuzz and i'm just seeing so much cat hair in these leaves as i'm holding it up to the light and it's just showing through so yeah forgive me but a really really cool plant primalina sinensis i highly highly recommend uh trying out primolinas in general if you don't grow them already because they're really underserved houseplants the next one i want to talk about today is pardon me as i have to reach for all of these this is a peperomia so this is a peperomia and napoli knights and this is a rather new variety of pepperoni on the market and i'm really quite fond of it because i just love that blue silver color that it has but if i flip the leaves up hopefully this one is yes it's got this nice like burgundy maroonish color to it so i'm i'm a very big fan of plants that have different colors on the alternate sides of the leaves and i just think it's so striking seeing this blue color versus the red color i think it's just it's just fire and ice they're polar opposites these are actually the blooms right here so they're rather um insignificant blooms sometimes they do have a smell this one does not but i have i've yet to meet a peperomia that smells good actually that's not true some of them do smell kind of floral but many of them smell like um like body odor or old food they just they don't smell they don't smell good so it's not about the blooms but it's more more about the foliage but what's so incredible about pepperonis in my opinion is that there are just so many varieties so as i was saying that this is in particular a pepperoni at napoli nights there are so many varieties of pepperoni there are over a thousand species but i would say on the market readily available to us there's roughly about i'd say 50 in my area of the united states so there are just so many pepperonis to collect so if you have bright light as these plants do prefer brighter light and they do prefer to stay on the drier side um you can have so many plants in your home in fact anytime people come to me and they're like i feel kind of limited on the variety i'm like have you met peperomia because there's over a thousand species so you can fill up your home with some lovely pepperoni the thing about these i would say you have to be most mindful of is that they are quick to raw if you do over water them so i am very very hands off of my peperomias i have my little trick that i call the taco test where i go to squeeze the leaves and i can kind of if i'm going to squeeze them up like i'm folding it up like a soft taco shell or a hard taco shell um it is not really budging and if i folded this leaf up all the way it would snap and break so i know i can tell by the small amount of pressure i'm giving this that i shouldn't squeeze it anymore or it would break but when it's time to water my plant it will have lost all of that water in its leaves and they will lose their succulents and i will be able to squeeze the leaves up like a taco shell with ease without it breaking so i just think that's a very uh easy set and forget way if you will for me to figure out when it's time to water my pepperonis without having to just stick my finger in or put my moisture meter in the soil i can just tell by a quick feel of the leaves when it's time to water my plants and the next one i would like to talk about today is this is a deschidia or a dyskidia this one in particular is a a dishydia ovada and i'm really into the the leaves on this planet kind of reminds me of a peperomia that i'm quite interested in as well which is pepperoni quadrangularis but this is a little bit more um pronounced with its veins and this one you might notice i still have it in this plastic pot i actually have it normally in another pot but i just wanted it to look kind of fancy for this video but this one i totally fry in a southern facing window and i water it when i remember which is probably not enough from the way that you can see how i've lost some of the foliage on these new vines as it's been growing i just don't think i've been paying enough attention to this plant but that's the one thing i'm really into about this plant is i really don't pay attention to it that often and it still looks quite wonderful so while it hasn't necessarily been the fastest grower for me it is still a wonderful plant and de chittias or discidias uh you'll often see sold on mounts and i think that's really incredible because not only are these pet friendly but you can grow them on your wall uh which is there's no way for your pets to be able to get to that so i just think that's a great option i do have a couple mounted to skidias or deschetias in my home you can say whatever you like i tend to bounce back and forth the worst thing i think you could do with your dashitias is over water them however if you are growing them on those mounts that i just spoke of it is very difficult to overwater them so if you have had issues with over watering dishedias in the past if you try growing them try growing them on a mount because i think you'll find a lot more success as i have recently but these plants are so cool there's only a few varieties of dishidia out there and it's nice to find a new one because they're they are few and far between even though they are in your local plant shops just finding many varieties is few and far between and a plant that's actually in the same family as is this hoya so this one right here is a hoya macrophylla varagata and i'm really into just the leaves of this plant it's it's so beautiful you can see these new leaves right here how gorgeous they are and this is a variegated version of hoya macrophylla so there is a type of hoya macrophylla without this uh white band around the edges and hoyas as well as the shadias are very drought tolerant plants they prefer a lot of light so i do grow this one in a window as well and you can see that this has this red blush and you probably saw on my dishedia ovada that it did have a little bit of a red blush to it as well and that's because i am giving these plants a lot of sunlight in my home i have western and southern windows which is a lot of sunlight so i do like to put plants in the windows that can really take that light and this hoya as well as the dishidia are plants that can really take that bright sunlight so they're perfect for me in my home setting but do keep in mind uh what kind of lighting you might have in your home of course you can grow hoyas and shadias away from your windows but you just need to be mindful to make sure that you do not over water them or perhaps give them a really well draining mixture to make sure that you're not going to over water them but hoyas there are so many hoyas they flower as well but what i'm really in to about hoyas is the way they grow you probably see it that i have it on this little bamboo hoop right here and the the vines or the tendrils just kind of weave their way around and some of the ones in my home kind of just grab on to their surroundings so i gave this one which looked like it was about to go a little wild a bamboo hoop so i've done that with a couple of the hoys in my home just to kind of keep them contained and i think this is a really great way to turn what is typically seen in plant stores as a hanging plant into a floor plan so down the line i could turn this hoya into a quite nice trellis specimen that would look quite nice on the floor rather than on a window siller hanging up so i think one of the biggest hurdles with pet-friendly plants is finding large pet-friendly plants because there really aren't that many out there but this is one in particular that is really cool that you could turn into a really nice floor plan specimen over time and could you imagine just a trellis full of hoya and it just blooming all the time wouldn't that be just so wonderful so for that reason and many others i do highly recommend hoya and one more plant that is actually also in the same family as the dishidia is this ever so lovely uh string of hearts so this is a variegated string of hearts and they they call this or this is cerro pegiae woody eye sarah peggia woody i varagata and as i said this is the variegated version which is why it's so pink and i also mentioned that i do have a very very bright light in my home in the windows where i grow my plants so that is another reason why some of my plants are going to have some very heavy red and pink tones to them so if your variegated string of hearts in your home if you do grow this one in your home is not pink it's a question i get asked very often it just needs some more light but this is a very easy going plant this is one of my tried and true plants that i've been growing for many years i just love string of hearts it is such a great plant to just hang up in a bright window and you can put them off a little bit from bright windows as well i just prefer growing my um succulent plants inside windowsills but these can do just fine away from windows if you don't have the space or the bright light available but this is one that i rarely water i think i i probably water this one maybe like every 10 days or so which i feel like is not a lot for a plant that's being fried in a bright window and this one just like the peperomias i do use my taco test as i can very easily fuel when it's time to water this plant but this is just one that i know is often sold small this is a very like long string of parts i would say but they're often sold very small like just inside the pot and that's exactly how i purchased mine and it's been about a year and a half i'd say at this point and it just looks so incredible it's such an incredible specimen of plants so if you do find these small i do promise you that in due time you will have a wonderful string of hearts plant but this is just such an incredible plant i of course have to talk about it today because it is so low maintenance on the watering as long as you have enough light for it okay so another one that prefers a little bit more bright light would be this rip salas paradoxa and rip salas are jungle cacti um this one in particular needs a little bit more light i'd say many of the other rip salads that grow in my home have kind of finer foliage you can see this is a rather thick foliage it's like as thick as my pointer finger um so this one does require a little bit more sunlight to grow adequately although i've only had this one for like a month or two so i can't necessarily speak on its care but i've just noticed with my rip stylus that i grow in my home the thicker the foliage the more light it likes the less thick the foliage uh say my rip salad specif they don't require as much sunlight to adequately grow but i do really enjoy rip salus because i just did a video recently talking about plants that are impossible to kill and i would consider rip salads impossible to kill as long as you're not over watering them i really do consider these plants impossible to kill they really just do not mind practically anything and they recover so well if you forget about them and they kind of dry out a little bit or if you do over water them and they and you lose a little bit of foliage i've been finding them very easy plants to recover rip salads are such and jungle cacti in general i'm pretty sure many jungle cacti are um non-toxic so don't quote me on that but i i know that rip salads are such a wonderful choice for a hanging plant if you are looking for something a little bit more interesting that is non-toxic next we're gonna talk about the incredible talanzia tectorum this is an air plant and i feel like air plants are so incredibly underserved they are such incredible plants and i feel like the main reason why we all think we have such bad luck with air plants is because they are just so alien and we don't treat them uh with the respect and attention that we treat our other house plants with and we often just like put them on a shelf or somewhere obscure that doesn't have remotely the care that they need so this one in particular as i said is a talanzia tectorum and i grow this in my south facing window next to my succulents and it loves life there and i'm aware that this uh talanzia in particular is it's very fuzzy and it's the environment that it grows is on like cliffs like on rocks so it's very used to like arid environments very similar to my succulents and cacti so i give it basically that same exact care and i pull it off the wall it hangs out on the wall and i pull it off the wall every like 10 to 14 days and i give it a good spray with my spray bottle and i just let it sit on the counter until it dries and i put it back up and this thing just lives and it's just so interesting um that it grows like i'm it's it's so cool so air plants in general are just so incredible they're all non-toxic to pets and you can hang them practically wherever it's just like the mounts i talked about earlier that they don't you don't need to have them somewhere where your pets can reach them of course you can hang any of the plants that i've been talking about today but these are quite phenomenal in the aspect that you can quite literally put them anywhere of course if you want them to grow and you don't want them to just die on you you really should give them the care and the requirements that they deserve so brighter light than you probably would consider but so incredible like such an incredible house plant so um talansian tectorum is one that i think takes the cake for me in terms of like my favorite air plants so i really wanted to spotlight that one today okay so next up this is a calathea orbifolia and this one not necessarily in the best condition i actually have another one that's right next to me on my on the floor here which is in much better condition but i really don't feel like you know when i have this one available i'm not going to pull this one up i'll just show you guys some footage of it but this is a great option for a floor plan an interesting floor plant for pet owners because we do have cats and we do have plenty of floor plans but this in this area right here is like in our vision for getting into it it's in our vision of like the tele thank you it's in the the vision of our television so if my roommate's cat is hungry and he's like mad or if he's like looking for trumbull trouble he likes to chew on the plants right here so we keep the califia orbifolia because it's a pet-friendly plant right here dead and center there's always a few ratty lower leaves that he can chew on if he wants to which we don't encourage him to chew on the plant but given we know he's gonna chew on the plant if he's mad we have the pet friendly plant right and ready to go so just wanted to point that out and talk about that for a second but this is my small slightly less glorious calathea orbifulia and of course all calatheas are pet friendly as well as all prayer plants um but i would say that calathea orbifolia is really the only one that i see sold large i guess stromanthi triostar is sold large as well pretty often but those are pretty hard to maintain well i find calathea orbifolia actually very very easy to maintain as far as calatheas go but this one prefers um brighter light i would say it prefers brighter light than many other calatheas definitely and um this one does not like to dry out if it does dry out it kind of like wilts a little bit or the edges might curl up a little bit kind of like you see here but this isn't because of um dryness this is just because of improper care but um the one thing about calatheas or prayer plants is that they don't love um the things in our tap water they don't love fluoride they don't love chlorine they don't love bromine so if you can use um distilled water is best filtered's okay but distilled water is best because it's going to get rid of those it's not going to have those things in the water that's the best bet for these plants and if you are watering them over time with water that has those minerals in it it's going to get brown tips as you can see and i've also heard that if you are not giving them the adequate humidity that they want they will get a little bit of brown edging which is typically something i notice um as the new leaves are unfurling so just something i wanted to point out but this is such a great option if you are looking for a large floor plan but you are very stuck on having a pet friendly plant this is the one i would recommend the most i know they're a little difficult to find in like a large 10-inch pot i mean i found one but i i see them in six inch pots all the time so if you can wait a year to really grow it out i'm sure you can do it and gosh there are so many plants i have to talk about today so this next one is an ashkenanthus so this is ashkenanthus uh longicalis i think they also used to call this ishganthus marmaratis either one of those is the old name and one of them's the new name i don't really know i think it's h penance is longacallis but this is a really excellent hanging plant for your home so while the foliage i think is quite excellent uh from the top i think it's even better from below i don't know how i'm going to show you guys this well but i can't even see the camera but gosh all the honks today but the undersides of these leaves are very beautiful and purple it's it's such a striking pattern so i have a couple of these that i just have hanging up in my home because i really enjoy seeing them from beneath ice cananthus is uh gazinariet as well so it's just in the same family as this primolina census although they look completely different i would say this almost looks a lot more say like the hoya or the dishidium in terms of care i don't water these that often because they are hanging up i don't get off up there that often but i'd say probably roughly every seven to ten days i am getting up there and watering these plants and i don't fry them in bright windows i have them off a couple of feet each from southern windows which are very bright windows but they're kind of like hidden against the wall i would say roughly like three or four feet away from those windows so not receiving bright light by any means but if i did give this one give this one a little bit brighter light i'm sure it will grow a little quicker for me however if i grew them in those south facing windows i think that would be just too much light and i would probably get some spot um spots of light damage on these leaves so just one thing to keep in mind you wouldn't necessarily want to fry any of your lipstick plants i find that they don't do very well in those conditions and one more to talk about today this is my platycerium bifurcatum which is a staghorn fern and this is just such a cool plant i think this is one that is very very common you see these every plant store has these in stock and this is one that i had been personally trying to grow for many years i think this is like my my fourth staghorn fern and i've had this one for probably over a year now at this point but um yeah so it's new success but um what i've learned about these is that they require much more light than you would expect when you think of a fern typically i think of a low light plant like i keep my maiden hair ferns and my my bird's nest ferns in like the darker corners of my apartment and they do fine as long as i remember to water them but this staghorn fern has much thicker foliage it's got this like white um like i don't know like dusty coating on the leaves that you don't want to rub off that probably protects it from the light i don't really know i'm trying to figure out why this plant loves really really bright light so this one i grow just like two or three feet off of my southern facing window and that's where i really found success with growing this plant so you can probably see as well this is just mounted on a piece of wood you can purchase these mounted quite often on wood but i just bought one and a piece of wood and some moss and some fishing line and i wrapped it all up and i have videos on how to do these if you're interested so you can look that up and i'm sure other people have videos as well but this is such an interesting way to grow your plants it's like vegan antlers i always equate it to because this is literally just leafy deer antlers growing on my wall and it's so incredible now you're probably wondering how do i water this i literally just pull this piece of wood off the wall and i put it in the sink and i just soak all of this moss down and i probably do that every ideally like every three or four days but it's totally fine if i do it once a week and this is a very forgiving fern so if i do not water this plant enough i will just find it kind of wilted rather than other ferns that you will find completely dried up and crisped and dead so this is a very very forgiving firm but the one thing i do want to say about these is they definitely require more light than you would expect because this is something you might want to just like throw it on the wall where it looks good but you got to keep in mind that if it's not receiving enough light it's not going to look very good for very long so just one thing to keep in mind there but that's going to about do it for today's video 10 interesting pet friendly plants i hope that i opened your eyes to some really cool plants i tried really hard to pick plants that you could find at your local plant shop so i would say that every single one of the ones that i've talked about today i can find locally so i believe you could find it locally as well but um if you can't find them locally i'm sure all of these would be very easy to find online on your favorite houseplant web store so yeah thank you guys so much for joining me today if you don't already follow me on instagram at philly foliage subscribe to my channel and i will see you guys in my next video have a great time

Channel: Nick Pileggi

Views: 34,195

Rating: 4.9568529 out of 5

Keywords: nontoxic, non-toxic, pet safe, pet friendly, plants, plant, houseplant, houseplants, top 10, top 5, nick pileggi, hoya, peperomia, fern, calathea

Id: s5e9Y6VrkhM

Length: 22min 13sec (1333 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020