Name: Houseplant Trends 2021: Most Tempermental: The Polka Dot Plant (Hypoestes Phyllostachya) Care + Tips
Uploaded: 2025-09-21T08:00:11.000Z
Duration: 8 min 37 s
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Hey guys, sometimes the relationships we have with our houseplants are nothing but positive, unicorns and rainbows, you know what I mean.

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And then there are those plants that just can't stop giving us a hard time either because we don't understand how to care for them or we just don't have the right conditions for them in the first place.

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And then there are those plants that look totally fine one day and then the next they look completely dead.

The polka dot plant is one of those plants.

I would describe it as very needy and pretty temperamental.

It's a gorgeous house plant with the vivid pink colors and that sort of dark green foliage and honestly I think it's just completely gorgeous and I love the way that it looks.

And basically when you add it all up in relationship terms, I feel like this is one of those unhealthy codependent relationships.

Where you need each other but you're often left feeling hurt and confused.

I don't know where I'm taking this relationship analogy but this plant is so temperamental.

The polka dot plant or its scientific name Hypoestes phyllostachia, say that five times fast, which reminds me if you want to see me basically completely fail at pronouncing scientific plant names over and over again then please check out my pickle plant video.

Anyways the polka dot plant is native to Madagascar and definitely adds a beautiful pop of color to any space.

I'm going to be covering all you need to know about caring for the polka dot plant as well as some important considerations based on my experience with this drama queen.

I'm Tyler and if you like what you're or you find this video useful please don't forget to give it a thumbs up or better yet you can subscribe to my channel.

So the most important tips that I can share with you when it comes to caring for the polka dot plant are watering and humidity.

These plants need to have a moderately moist soil kind of all the time so when you forget to water it it will shrivel up and look like it died but don't fret a nice healthy watering will revive your polka dot plant.

One way to keep this plant happy I found is to give it a little splash of water on the daily.

If you are unsure you can scratch the surface of the soil and if that is even beginning to feel like it's drying out then it's time to give this plant a watering.

Now if you are watering it correctly but it's not getting enough humidity it will either play dead again or it will start to get extremely fuzzy.

If you are getting that fuzziness on the stems and the perimeter of the leaves and foliage that means that the plant is to capture more moisture from the air and its atmosphere so that means that's an indication that you are not providing your polka dot plant with enough humidity.

Now these plants ain't playing when it comes to humidity.

Yeah just one of the high prices I'm willing to pay for this beauty.

The best and simplest thing you can do is pick up a hygrometer.

I have this one here that I picked up on Amazon and I'll throw a link down in the description hashtag not sponsored but basically these are amazing because they take the guessing out of humidity and give you an exact reading on the humidity levels.

From my experience to actually keep a mid-sized room at 50% humidity actually requires two humidifiers.

I mean there are so many different factors and considerations that go into what creates a certain humidity level.

I'm just saying for me it did take two humidifiers to get to that 50% level.

Now I do have a humidifier that mists and I do have a mist free humidifier and those two you know in unison together is what gets me to that 50% level of humidity.

Alright so once you have watering and humidity kind of on point and figured out things with the polka dot plant become relatively quite a lot easier.

Now they do like a lot of sunlight I keep mine in a south facing window and it does get some direct sunlight as well.

You can definitely fertilize these plants and it's probably encouraged they're pretty heavy feeders.

Now I feed this with a diluted liquid fertilizer pretty well balanced in the spring and summer.

The polka dot plant can be prone to pests so just be sure to take a peek and look under the foliage and leaves when you are watering it.

Otherwise that's generally it when it comes to the crucial care tips for this plant.

These plants can definitely become a little leggy and that's definitely the case for me and what's happened here.

You can see I have this one sort of leggy stem that's creeping out and if you want to maintain that sort of bushier appearance there are two things you could do.

The first is either prune back this legginess or you could use this stem to propagate a whole new plant and that's what I'm going to do right now.

So to do this I am going to be using a new little container.

In this I've included a good premium or professional potting mix and I've gone ahead and added some extra vermiculite and basically with your clean pair of shears and some rooting hormone you want to get a good five or six inches.

I'm going to take it just above this node and basically we can just remove some of this bottom foliage from the plant like so.

Dunk it in some rooting hormone, just tap off any excess and I'm going to create a little spot for it and basically like that I should have hopefully in a couple of weeks, three or four weeks, successfully propagated my polka dot plant and now I've been left with a plant that looks a lot more balanced and even.

So if you do get some legginess of course you can go ahead and prune and discard that portion or you can use it to propagate and get another plant.

Oh yeah, don't forget to give this video a thumbs up or hit that subscribe button to subscribe to my channel.