Houseplants That Look So Good... They Look Fake

hi everyone my name is nick and today we're going to talk about plants that look so good they look fake i have had so many times someone come into my home and point at one of my plants and say is that one fake as if i would waste my precious surface space in my home and scatter fake plants around my house for those less informed and no they are all absolutely real they all just look too damn good that they make you question sometimes is that a real or a fake plan so that's exactly what we're going to talk about today and this is kind of inspired by this plant right here which will be the first plant that we talked about today which is ugly nema spring snow as i was just talking about this in my recent video house plants that are impossible to kill because this thing is seriously impossible to kill but i was also mentioning in that video that this thing really looks fake and that's because it just looks so good that it really just looks like a fake plant so this is going to be the first one we talked about today there are so many ugly nemas or chinese evergreens either popular or their common name but none of them really look as fake and artificial as this ugly name of spring snow right here so not only does this plant look fake but it behaves fake because as i said it's seriously impossible to kill ugly nema's prefer to stay on the drier side um so i usually grow mine in a well draining soil mixture and i'll water it roughly every like 10 to 14 days and this one i did have in literally the darkest corner of my apartment so i decided to just very recently move it right here so that can hang out in the background of my videos for the foreseeable future but yeah it's just so beautiful um really does have that completely artificial appearance as most of these plants will on this video but this is really the one that just inspired this video today so i just want to quickly highlight it once more although it probably is slightly redundant if you watch all my videos but next up i would really love to talk about this hoya right here so this is hoya yeti and this is probably like the fakest of all of the hoyas i grow my home and i grow a lot of hoyas in my home but the thing about this is it just really just feels and looks like it's not a living plant which is something i really love about it it's got a very interesting canoe shaped leaf that just really doesn't necessarily fit in it almost looks as if you would find this um in the fake plant section at your craft store along the vining twining whatever uh selection of uh doodads and fake plant garland that they have there so i really just feel like this falls in the mix and not only that it just feels fixed every time people are in my home i'm touching my plants and they touch this one it's like is this one real but yes it is real it does grow um i love this plan i've had it for a couple of years and it's just a very slow growing so once again we'll kind of make you question if it's real or not but no it is a plant that just likes to take its time is a hoya that i found doesn't necessarily require as scorching sunlight as some of them do prefer this one seems to take less light which i think is kind of interesting as it is a very succulent hoya but it's been doing just fine for me pulled back roughly six feet from a southern facing window so it's been doing quite well but really does have that fake appearance of course if this plant did bloom for me at some point it would look a little bit less fake but you can see i would say that this plant really does have a very slight artificial appearance to it and the feeling it really does feel it really does feel fake like it doesn't feel anything remotely like most of the plants that i have in my home and the next thing i want to talk about is this calathea right here so this is the calathea macayana and this is a prayer plant the umbrella term for calatheas morontis stromantes are all prayer plants and i would say practically every single prayer plant would fall into this list today but that would be a little boring if i just talked about prayer plants so we're just going to talk about one today and that's this calathea macayana which i would say is probably the one in my home that really does look the most fake or artificial it just has so much detail to the leaves the undersides are nice and purple which is really wonderful but it just overall really just doesn't fit in with my collection because it really does have such artificial appearance to it which i think is very lovely this um calathea is not the easiest plant to care for they're a little bit more higher maintenance than the fact that they prefer higher humidity they don't like um additives into their water so it's best to not use tap water and to rather use distilled water for your plants as they just don't love things like chlorine and bromine in the tap water and what's going to happen over time as i admittedly water all my prayer plants with tap water is they can't transpire out these additives so they get stored in the tips of the plant as these little brown crispy edges so that's something just to keep in mind and if you're not giving your prayer plants enough humidity they'll usually get brown around the edges so one thing to make your prayer plants quickly not look fake is a couple of blemishes here and there as you can see on mine but it still is a very beautiful plant so if you do have a picture perfect one of these in your home i would not be shocked if everybody who comes into your home who really doesn't know very much about plants just assumes that this is a fake plant because there is just a little too much going on for this to be assumably a real plant so i think you all get what i'm saying next i would love to talk about this ficus taniki i think this one really does stand out as one of the plants that's like the fakest looking things because this foliage is just like as if it was set to a camouflage pattern or something like that it's just very out there and it's really lovely how the new leaves come in with this bright red hue to it there's a another variety of this plant called ficus elastica ruby which really holds onto that red color for like halfway down the plant in my experience but um this one is just the taniki which just has the plain white leaves and just gets the red leaves and the new growth as i have had in my home but the leaves really do look so fake they have such a wonderful camouflage pattern to them it's just so lovely and it's something where you almost can't imagine it necessarily growing in your home and like producing new leaves because it just looks so unreal so this is the plant for me that i was just kind of like i i was in disbelief when i first brought it home a couple of years ago that it was even going to do anything for me because it just kind of deemed it a little too beautiful for me to have so i'm very grateful that this thing has been growing um pretty well for me and i do find ficus elastica taniki in particular to be a very reliable houseplant given you give it enough light so my ficus taniki and my ficus rubies i both grow inside windowsills i find that's where they do the best and if i pull them off in the past i have had issues of them losing their lower leaves because i think they're just holding onto water for too long so i just grow them in a windowsill i water them not too often i don't think i water either of mine more than once a week and they seem to really flourish specifically my ruby has been really grown like crazy but in particular i think these ones that have the more white and green leaves i think really have that much more artificial look compared to the ruby so really wanted to point this one out today it really does stand out in my home because of that color um whether it's the white or the red or just the crazy amounts of greens that are hiding on this on these leaves i think it's just such an incredible plant that really does look too good to be real it's too good to be true you know and uh there are a bunch of snake plants that i grow in my home and they all are very funky they're very architectural plants they're not very foliage they don't really have leaves so they do kind of have like a very like fake look to them but this one in particular it stands to vary a trifociata bantal sensation and this is the one for me that is just i i wouldn't even like consider this a plant i would consider this an art piece in my home like it is just so funky it's got so much about it that's just like as if i i purchased a piece of art rather than the plant if i if i put my face like really close to this plant or if i just like take pictures with my iphone just like right up to the plant it just it doesn't even look like foliage it just completely looks unreal which is something i just adore by about this plant i can show you it's a real plant because we do have a little bit of brown blemishing right here as you can see um but it once again a very excellent plant for a bright windowsill i grow this in the western facing window and i've been growing it there for two years at this point and it's been doing very well for me producing a bunch of little babies which is very exciting it just really doesn't look real it's just another one of those plants where it's like you bring it home and you really almost feel like it's just not going to survive because it just looks so artificial so this is of course one i had to point out for today's topic but yeah really really does not look like a real plant like it it really just nothing about this looks real it doesn't even have leaves you know what i mean on top of just not having leaves and being completely architectural it just has just such a striking artificial appearance i think it's just so incredible i really don't love any sansevieria the way i love my sansevieria trifossia the bantal sensation because it is just it is just something else next up i would love to talk about air plants or talanzia so this is just one in particular this one right here is atlanta aranthos and talanzias are so underrated they are one of the most underrated house plants that i am currently aware of i think people sleep on these things because they are just so out there and so alien that once again you just kind of think you're going to kill it and the one thing about airplanes is you know i brought them home and i put them on just a shelf and just expected them to live they don't they don't do that they need a good amount of light so this is one of my favorite way to display air plants which is just i call this a mount i guess even though it's not really mounted on there but it's just a piece of bark that i've quite literally just glued a stick to put a piece of wire in and put this air plant in and i call it a day this is just such a fun way to display your air plants and of course i display airplanes air plants and so many other ways in my home because that's the joy about air plants is they are just so wacky and so out there and the fact that they do not need a pot and they would die if you plant them in a pot because they would rot that they can go practically anywhere given they're getting enough light so i would recommend keeping your air plants if you come within like five or six feet from a decently bright window or inside a much darker window and you can also judge your airplanes by the color so this is a little bit more of a greener air plant compared to like my talansia tectorum let's say which i'll show you guys a picture of now which is much more white that one can take a lot more light so i grow that one in the southern facing window where this one i'm going inside a western facing window but it's kind of positioned somewhere where it's not getting hit by any direct sunlight which is exactly what this air plant wants as it is typically growing on trees in the wild attached to trees and they have that canopy from the tree leaves up ahead just kind of shielding that harsh sunlight so that's exactly what this wants i like to spray them over soaking them i sprayed them until they're soaking wet mind you but i don't like to just dunk them inside water so i spray them until they're soaking wet um something like this i might set upside down to dry other ones if they're a little bit less thick i might just like set them upright but i really want to get all the water out of the crown of the plant because i find that that can incite rot but air plants are so incredible there are so many incredible ways to display them and i really think it is a plant that everyone is sleeping on because there are just so many types of air plants they all look so different they all are so cool and they are really easy to care for given you really just give them enough light i think that's the secret to practically any house plant if you're struggling with it give it more light so we have one more i want to talk about today which is my staghorn fern or my platycerium bifurcatum and this really just looks like leaf antlers like i call this the vegan antlers and it seems to be the best explanation for this when i'm trying to explain what it is to people and it's just so funky this thing is literally just growing on a piece of wood it's a fern that i have tied to um this wood and it's just living and growing these antler-like things and this is how the plant grows so as um these plants get more mature they tend to get more um sections to their leaves and it really does have that look of like a moose or deer antlers up on your wall which is specifically why i have this plant mounted to a piece of wood because that's exactly the effect i'm going for and i think that's what most people are going for when they grow this plant in their home if you've been struggling with them in the past because i've struggled with them in the past so i'm just speaking from experience give them more light as i was saying if you struggle with a plant try giving it more light so this i grow maybe like four or five feet away from a southern facing window which is pretty bright and i water it when it dries out which is probably every like every three or four days maybe pushing onto five sometimes if i'm feeling a little lazy and the one thing i love about staghorn ferns is they are much more forgiving than regular ferns if you've grown like a boston fern or a maiden hair fern in your home and you've forgotten about that thing for just a couple days and you came back to a completely dried up dead plant it doesn't happen with staghorn firms they have a little bit more structure to them that they can withstand a little bit more drought so i find these if you do go say i go a week without watering this thing which happens plenty of times it'll just look a little wilty and i'll just go ahead and give it a nice good soak and it'll perk back up in a day's time so a staghorn fern is a really excellent friend to try not only does it look completely fake in appearance and just really just out there it's just a funky thing it's so easy to grow given you give it enough light so like i said i think that's the secret for all of my plants i'm talking about today except maybe the the calathea but um all of these if you've struggled with any of these in the past or if you're struggling with them right now increase the light and i think you'll have a little bit more luck but anyway that's gonna about do it for plants that look so good that they look fake and i would love to hear from you guys what you think about other plants that look fake because i know there are so many other ones like calathea or nada and stuff that i don't even grow in my home that really do look even more fake than the ones i was talking about today so i would love to hear your examples 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 day

Channel: Nick Pileggi

Views: 56,381

Keywords: fake, plants, plant, houseplant, houseplants, aglaonema, calathea, prayer plant, staghorn fern, air plant, tillandsia, airplant, nick pileggi, hoya

Id: XUeZxg8FCLA

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020