Cast iron plant
Aspidistra elatior
- Wants
- Medium
- Tolerates
- Bright indirect down to low
- Difficulty
- 1/5
- Pets
- Safe
Why it wants that
Everything about it - thick evergreen blades, a slow rhizome, no seasonal flush - is built for a Japanese forest floor that receives only filtered canopy light, so a dim corner is its normal condition rather than a compromise.
Too little light
It stops rather than suffers: no new blades unfurl for a whole season and the clump stays exactly the size it arrived at.
Too much
Blades bleach from deep green to a yellowish-green and then develop dry brown scorch patches; the two fetched photos show this directly - the shade-grown Lyon botanic-garden clump measures a dark #384828 while the open-ground sun-grown clump measures #587828.