What an African violet is, and what it is not
An African violet is a gesneriad, a member of the family Gesneriaceae, which puts it beside gloxinia and streptocarpus. It is not a violet, and it is not a primrose. Primroses are Primulaceae, a separate family altogether, though care cards still pair the two. The name is unsettled: molecular work moved every species of Saintpaulia into Streptocarpus, while growers and the specialist societies still say Saintpaulia. A plant tag and a botanist can disagree about the name and both be right.
The plant comes from Tanzania. Baron Walter von Saint Paul-Illaire collected the first one in 1892, and the genus carries his name. Its wild conditions explain the care better than any list of preferences: humidity of 30 to 60 percent, temperatures from the low 60s into the 80s Fahrenheit, which is an ordinary heated house. A mature plant stays under a foot across and survives outdoors only in zones 11 to 12. In return it flowers 10 to 12 months of the year when the light is right.
Droopy leaves: the trap that kills most of them
A drooping African violet is as likely to be drowning as thirsty, because droopy leaves are the first symptom of root and crown rot, and watering it again is what finishes it off. Roots kept saturated stop taking up water and oxygen, and the crown breaks down after them. Pythium and Phytophthora move into mixes that stay wet, drain badly, or hold a crown planted too deep. Root disease shows first as a limp, unthrifty plant, with the leaves still looking normal. Overwatering kills more African violets than anything else.
The foliage will not tell you which it is. An African violet does not visibly wilt when the mix runs dry, the way a peace lily does. Lift the pot or tip the plant out and look at the roots. Weight settles most cases: a pot of dry mix is noticeably lighter than the same pot moist. Wet mix under a limp plant means rot. Get the plant out and stand it on paper towels straight away: the center can pull through when the outer leaves are lost. Rot has its own marks: a soft mushy crown, older leaves drooping while young center leaves stunt and blacken, and a plant that lifts loosely from its pot. If the mix is dry instead, rewet it gradually, a tablespoon at a time repeated hourly.
How to water an African violet
Water from the bottom, at room temperature, and take the pot out as soon as the surface is damp. Stand it in a saucer holding about an inch of water, and leave it until the top of the mix feels moist. Lift it out then and pour the rest away. How long that takes is genuinely unsettled, from 15 to 30 minutes to a couple of hours. The damp surface is the signal, not the clock. Empty the saucer either way: water standing under the pot is what starts the rot. Water again when the mix feels dry to the touch, without letting it dry out completely, and leave a longer gap while the plant is not flowering.
Keeping water off the leaves is the other half of the job. Drops sitting on a leaf leave disfiguring light-colored spots or rings. The damage is worst when cold water touches a relatively warm leaf, so use water at room temperature or a little warmer. Softened and chlorinated water are both ruled out; distilled water, rainwater or reverse-osmosis water take their place, and the ideal pH sits between 6.5 and 7.5. Wicking replaces hand watering. A synthetic wick 6 to 8 inches long feeds a 4 inch pot, in a mix at least half coarse perlite so the roots keep air even when the mix is wet.
How much light it actually needs
Bright indirect light at about 1,000 foot-candles for 8 to 12 hours a day is the measured target. In a house that is roughly the light within 3 feet of a southeast or west window, no direct sun on the leaves, or within 12 inches of any bright window. Darkness belongs in the requirement, and almost every care card leaves it out: flowering asks for 8 to 10 hours of dark alongside the light. A violet will grow in a dim room, and it will not flower there.
The plant tells you which side of the line it is on. One getting enough light grows as a flat horizontal wheel of leaves. One that is short of light reaches upward, lifting its leaves on long petioles. Too much light shows as foliage gone pale or yellowish green, much lighter than normal. Under lamps the numbers shift: a plant grown entirely under fluorescent tubes runs at about 600 foot-candles for 12 to 16 hours a day, tubes 12 to 15 inches above it.
Why a healthy plant stops blooming
Light is the first thing to check, because a violet grows perfectly well in a room too dim to flower in. A plant carrying healthy leaves and no buds, standing well back from its window, has usually answered the question already. The check nobody makes is the second one. Flowering asks for a fixed span of darkness as well as a span of light.
Below that, four things stall a violet that has the light. Crowns come first: the plant is meant to run as a single rosette, and side crowns, called suckers, compete with it. Feeding is next, and an overfed plant shows a tight center with new leaves that take on a rusty look. Then temperature and moving air: a cold night stunts the plant and the recovery is long, and dry air makes buds fail before they open. Age is last: plants mature over 2 to 5 years, and an old violet builds a bare stretch of stem below the rosette.
Work out why yours is not flowering
Work down and stop at the first check the plant fails.
Why the pot should stay small
An African violet blooms best in a pot that looks too small for it. Size the pot at about a third of the leaf span: a 4 inch pot for a 12 inch plant, a 3 inch pot for a 9 inch one. The roots of a mature violet reach about that far out under the leaves. The University of Wisconsin puts it at a half instead, on the same reasoning of keeping the plant slightly pot-bound. Both are smaller than the pot a violet tends to arrive in. Depth is less contested: nothing deeper than four inches, since the roots are shallow.
Repotting a violet means refreshing the mix while the pot stays the size it was, once a year, to bring in nutrients and clear salt. The other repotting job arrives with age. Once the bare stem below the rosette has grown into a long neck, cut the plant off at soil level and re-root it in the medium used for leaf cuttings. Or repot it deeper, so the leafless stem sits below the soil line and roots there.
What the potting mix should be made of
The mix is soilless, light and fast draining, built from peat or coir with vermiculite and perlite in it. Three parts sphagnum peat moss to two parts vermiculite to one part perlite is the standard recipe, with a little lime to offset the acidity of the peat. Coir stands in for the peat as a near-neutral option. Violets have fine roots, and a bag of general potting soil does not do the job.
Keep the mix slightly acid, somewhere around 6.0 to 6.5. Lime turns up in the recipes because a peat-heavy mix runs acid on its own. Set the crown above the soil surface, press the mix around it, and keep the drainage good, because standing water rots the plant. Hygiene belongs with the mix, because that is where rot starts. Media being reused should be slightly moist, heated to 180 degrees Fahrenheit and held there for 30 minutes. A pot that held a plant lost to rot gets scrubbed, then soaked for 30 minutes in 1 part household bleach to 9 parts water. Violet pests and diseases move between plants kept together very easily, which makes that half hour cheap.
Feeding: two schedules that do not stack
Two feeding schedules exist for this plant, and you pick one. The first is a heavily diluted feed at every watering, a balanced houseplant fertilizer cut to a quarter of the strength printed for weekly use. Where the label calls for a quarter teaspoon per gallon once a week, that means an eighth of a teaspoon every time. The second is a high-phosphorus plant food every two weeks through the growing season, at label strength. Taking the frequency from one and the strength from the other puts a full label dose in at every watering. That is how most violets get overfed.
What is in the bottle matters as much as the interval. Violets are sensitive to fertilizer whose nitrogen comes from urea, so pick a product carrying at least two nitrogen formulations, such as ammoniacal and nitrate. Growers who feed on an interval split it by bloom: a violet fertilizer monthly while the plant is flowering, a general plant food at half strength every 3 to 6 weeks while it is not. Overfeeding announces itself in a center that pulls tight and new leaves with a rusty look.
Temperature, humidity, and summering outdoors
Ordinary indoor room temperature suits an African violet, 60 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, with 70 as the sweet spot and nights of 65 to 70 better still. The floor is the number that matters. A night that dips below 60 stunts the plant, and the recovery afterward is long. That is what makes a winter windowsill risky: air against cold glass at night runs well below the room.
House air is humid enough. Aim for 30 to 60 percent, the same band violets grow in wild, and 40 to 60 works as well. Do not chase a higher figure. Cyclamen mites, the one pest that ruins a violet outright, develop fastest at 80 to 90 percent humidity near 60 degrees Fahrenheit, close to what tenting a plant in a cool room creates. The sign of air too dry is buds that fail before they open, worse in a draft.
Summering the plant outside is disputed. In the United States it is treated as strictly an indoor plant, rarely grown outdoors even in the tropics. European growing advice allows a summer outdoors in enough shade, with the plant brought back in below 16 degrees Celsius. A bright indoor window already gives the plant what it asks for, so the trip outside stays optional.
Reading the leaves one symptom at a time
Distorted new growth is the one leaf symptom that is never a watering mistake. Leaves that come in cupped, curled, dwarfed and thickened, on internodes so short that the center looks tufted, are the signature of mite feeding. No amount of light, water or fertilizer produces that combination. Mealybug damage is easier to confirm, because the insect is visible: soft-bodied, about a quarter inch long, wrapped in white wax that looks cottony. Mite injury sits in the newest leaves at the crown; mealybug injury turns up anywhere, with cotton you can see.
Color across the whole rosette points at light. Leaves gone pale or yellowish green, much lighter than normal, are getting more light than they want. Leaves lifting and reaching upward on lengthening petioles are getting less. Both are answered by moving the pot. Marks that sit in one spot have local causes: light-colored rings where drops of water sat, brown sunken patches where a petiole crosses the rim of a clay pot, which is salt. Yellowing at the bottom of the rosette is the ordinary end of a leaf's life; take those leaves off. None of the three is a reason to change how you water.
What actually goes wrong, in the order it comes up
Roughly the order these come up in.
A violet grows perfectly well in light too dim to flower in. Move it within 12 inches of a bright window.
Wet mix under a limp plant is rot. Careful, infrequent watering does not protect a plant whose mix never dries out, and the crown can be black by the time the leaves say anything.
Check the saucer first, since a pot left standing in water after bottom watering keeps the mix wet. Cupped, thickened new leaves on short internodes point instead to mite feeding.
Treatment runs for months and often changes nothing. The mites are very hard to control, and an infested plant is usually thrown out.
Not the emergency it looks like. A bare stem under the rosette is ordinary aging. Cut the plant off at soil level and re-root it, or repot it deeper.
Two root-dwelling species live in the mix and stay out of sight until a repot. The visible kind comes off insect by insect, with a cotton swab dipped in alcohol diluted with an equal amount of water.
Water sitting on the foliage can spot a leaf permanently. The marks are cosmetic and do not clear on their own.
Growing a whole new plant from one leaf
One leaf makes a whole new plant, and the method is settled. Take a healthy leaf with about an inch of stalk attached. Bury the stalk, and up to a quarter inch of the blade, in wet sand and vermiculite; trimming the petiole to 1 to 1.5 inches works the same way. After that the cutting runs on its own clock. Roots form at the base of the petiole in 3 to 4 weeks, and leaves push up 3 to 4 weeks after that. Plantlets show within two to six months, and a flowering plant takes about 6 to 9 months from the day you cut.
Suckers are the second source of plants, and they have to come off the parent anyway. Removing secondary crowns is ordinary pruning, and a mature one is separated by dividing the plant. Suckers taken while only four leaves are showing are the easy ones. A leaf cutting replaces a plant. A sucker taken early protects the plant you have and hands you a spare.
Size classes, flower forms and leaf types
Size class is the first thing a violet is sold by, and the same plant can be labeled standard in one shop and large in the next. Measure across a single mature crown. The purple flowers it is known for are one color among many.
Pests and diseases worth knowing
Cyclamen mites end a violet, and at about 1/100 of an inch they are undetectable without magnification. The damage identifies it: severe stunting of the leaves at the center, sometimes with curling and hairy grayish new growth, and flower buds that open misshapen. The mites are very difficult to control, and an affected plant is usually discarded. Thrips are small and hard to find, and spilled pollen on the flowers is often the first sign. Fungus gnats arrive with mix that stays wet and matter less than they look: of more than 600 North American species, only a few have larvae that damage living tissue.
The disease list is short and rot heads it. Excessive watering leading to root or crown rot is the major problem in African violet care; botrytis blight, powdery mildew, mites, mealybug, aphids and thrips fill out the list. Botrytis blight starts as small water-soaked lesions on the underside of a leaf, which turn dark brown to gray and pick up a fuzzy coating. It often follows mite injury, so controlling the mites is part of controlling the blight. A plant that has gone over to root disease is usually thrown out. Take a leaf off any violet you would be sorry to lose while it is still healthy.
Safe around cats, dogs and horses
African violets are non-toxic to dogs, cats and horses. The ASPCA carries Saintpaulia, family Gesneriaceae, as non-toxic to all three, with no toxic part named and no quantity attached. That puts a violet among the few flowering houseplants that can stand on an open shelf with a cat that chews. It says nothing about the anthurium beside it, which has to be looked up on its own.
How long one plant lasts
How long an African violet lasts is decided by whether it gets restarted. Plants mature in 2 to 5 years. From there the same violet carries on re-rooted, or is replaced by a leaf taken off it while it was healthy, which reaches flowering size in months. The violet on the windowsill years from now is either the original plant on new roots or its own descendant. The upkeep is small: dead and yellowed leaves come off as they appear, and the mix is renewed while the pot stays the size it was.
Five things people repeat about African violets
Five things people repeat, and what the plant actually does.
The myth: African violets are a kind of violet.
The reality: They are gesneriads, and their nearest houseplant relatives are gloxinia and streptocarpus. True violets belong to another family, and so do primroses, which are Primulaceae.
The myth: Water touching the leaves kills the plant.
The reality: The damage is cosmetic: drops sitting on a leaf leave light-colored spots or rings, worst where the water is colder than the leaf. What kills a violet is mix that stays wet.
The myth: A struggling violet needs a bigger pot.
The reality: Pot sizing runs the other way. A correctly sized pot restricts growth and can push a violet into flower, while a bigger one holds water the roots never reach.
The myth: They need full sun to flower.
The reality: Direct sun on the leaves is the damage, and too much light shows as foliage gone pale or yellowish green. A violet in a dim room grows perfectly well and simply does not flower.
The myth: A drooping violet is thirsty.
The reality: Drooping is also the first symptom of root and crown rot, and a sign the plant needs repotting. The mix decides which of the three it is, and the leaves do not.
What to expect from a new plant
A violet does not run on the seasonal clock behind most types of flowers, so its year starts the day it comes home.
The first six weeks are quarantine. Keep a new plant away from the collection and check it for insects and disease. Let it join the others only if it still looks healthy after about 6 weeks. The other first-week job is the pot. A violet usually arrives in something wider than a third of its leaf span, so the first repot is a step down in size.
The first bloom cycle is where the spot proves itself. Given the light it asks for, a violet can be in flower 10 to 12 months of the year. A plant that has settled in and produced nothing has answered the light question already. This is also where the feeding decision gets made once and then left alone.
By year three the base of the plant has changed. New leaves only come from the top and the lowest ones die off, so a bare stretch of stem builds up under the rosette. That neck is the normal end point of a healthy violet, and where it gets restarted: cut off at soil level and re-rooted, or set deeper so the bare stem roots from there.
FAQ
Do African violets like full sun or shade?
Neither. Bright indirect light, about 1,000 foot-candles for 8 to 12 hours a day, with no direct sun on the leaves. Too much bleaches the foliage pale, too little stops flowering.
Can African violets be left outside?
In the United States it is treated as an indoor plant, rarely grown outdoors even in the tropics. European advice allows a summer outside in shade, with the plant brought in below 16 degrees Celsius.
Is an African violet hard to care for?
Easy to grow, and easy to kill in one specific way. Violets can bloom 10 to 12 months of the year, and overwatering kills more of them than anything else.
Where is the best place to put an African violet?
Within 12 inches of a bright window, or 10 to 30 inches under a fluorescent or LED fixture run 6 to 12 hours a day. Keep it off a sill that drops below 60 degrees at night.
How do you fix curling African violet leaves?
Look at the center. Cupped, curled, thickened leaves with a tufted center are mite feeding, which is hard to control and usually ends with the plant discarded.
What does an overwatered African violet look like?
Limp and unthrifty, older leaves drooping first while the young center leaves stunt and blacken. The roots turn brown and mushy, and the mix is still wet through all of it.
What are the symptoms of crown rot in African violets?
A soft, mushy crown, drooping older leaves and blackened young growth at the center, and a plant that separates easily from its pot. Droopy leaves come first.
How often should an African violet be watered?
When the mix feels dry to the touch, without letting it dry out completely, with a longer gap while the plant is not flowering. Weight settles it faster than a schedule.
How often should you water African violets from the bottom?
Bottom watering is a method, and it sets no schedule. The pot goes into about an inch of room-temperature water and comes out when the surface feels moist.
How can you tell if an African violet is happy?
A flat horizontal wheel of leaves says the light is right, and leaves reaching upward on long petioles say it is short. Add buds that open cleanly and new center growth shaped like the rest.
Interesting tips
- If you cannot tell whether a plant needs feeding at all, feed one or two and wait about 10 days to see whether growth and color improve before feeding the rest.
- A violet lost to cyclamen mites can still be replaced by its own leaf. Keep cuttings from an infested plant enclosed until the plantlets are big enough to transplant, about 6 months, because the mites starve out first.
- There is a size class below the miniatures. Some varieties sell as micro-minis, at 3 inches or less across a mature crown, against the 6 inches that tops the miniature class.
Related Guides & Flowers
Cyclamen
The other pot plant sold in bloom that goes down to a soft crown, and the plant the cyclamen mite is named for.
Why gerbera daisies die indoors
The same crown rot on a different plant, and the same gap between how it looks and what caused it.
Flowers safe for cats
Where the rest of the windowsill gets checked, one plant at a time, against the same safety records.
Begonia
Another fuzzy-leaved houseplant grown from a leaf, with its own rules about water on the foliage.
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