Spider Plant Care: Brown Tips, Free Babies, and Why It Is Still the Best Starter Plant

Chlorophytum comosum has been in kitchens since the 1970s for good reasons. It grows in almost any light, forgives neglect, is non toxic to cats and dogs, and produces babies on long arching runners that root in a glass of water.

It also has one famous complaint, and the answer is not what most people assume.

The brown tips

Almost every spider plant has them. Three causes, and it is usually the first.

Fluoride and other minerals in tap water. Spider plants are unusually sensitive to fluoride, which is added to municipal water across much of the US, Canada, Australia and parts of the UK. They cannot excrete it, so it accumulates at the leaf tips and kills the tissue there.

Switch to filtered, distilled or rain water and new growth comes in clean. Letting tap water stand overnight helps with chlorine and does nothing for fluoride, which does not evaporate. That advice is repeated everywhere and only half works.

Fertiliser salt buildup. Look for white crust on the soil surface or pot rim. Flush the pot at a sink for a couple of minutes every few months and go easy on feeding.

Inconsistent watering. Letting it dry hard then soaking it. Tips die during the dry swings.

Trim the brown off just inside the dead tissue, following the leaf's natural taper. It is cosmetic only. Judge your fix by whether new leaves come out clean.

Water and light

Water when the top few centimetres are dry, thoroughly, then let it drain. Roughly weekly in summer and every two to three weeks in winter.

Spider plants store water in thick tuberous roots, which is why they survive being forgotten. If you unpot one and find fat white swollen roots, that is normal and not a disease.

Bright indirect light is best. They tolerate low light, though variegated types fade towards plain green in it. Direct hot sun scorches the leaves pale.

Why yours has no babies

The runners, called stolons, are the whole appeal, and plenty of plants never produce them.

It is too young. They generally need to be a year or two old and reasonably substantial before flowering and running.

Not enough light. Producing plantlets is expensive. In dim conditions the plant maintains itself and does nothing extra.

Too much pot. This one surprises people. Spider plants produce runners more freely when slightly pot bound. Repotting into something roomy often stops them for a season.

Day length. They tend to run in response to shorter days, so autumn is the usual season for it.

Potting the babies

Wait until a plantlet has small nubby roots of its own, which you can see at its base while it is still attached.

Then either snip it off and sit it in a glass of water for a week or two, or peg it down into a small pot of compost next to the parent while it is still attached, and cut the runner once it has rooted. The second method is more reliable because the parent keeps feeding it during the transition.

Three or four plantlets in one pot gives you a full plant straight away rather than one thin strand.

Pot, soil and feeding

Ordinary compost with some perlite. A pot with drainage, on the snug side.

Those tuberous roots are strong enough to crack plastic pots and push the plant up out of the compost, so when you see that happening, go up one size.

Feed at half strength monthly in spring and summer only. Overfeeding is a direct cause of the brown tips, so less is genuinely more here.

The pet question

Spider plant is non toxic to cats and dogs, which puts it in a small group with ferns, calathea, parlour palms and hoya.

Cats do tend to chew it, and it is sometimes described as mildly hallucinogenic to them in a loose catnip-like sense. Eating a lot of any plant can cause vomiting, but it is not poisonous, and it is one of the safest choices for a house with animals.

If you are not certain whether the plant you have is a spider plant or one of several similar looking variegated grassy plants, some of which are not pet safe, photograph a leaf with the base visible and Identium will confirm it.