Houseplants are perfect to bring a piece of nature into our homes. Their green tints and lush vegetation allows us to feel like we’re inside a man-made jungle. Many people control the growth of their plants strictly, by cutting of dying or imperfect leaves, craving straight stems and basically needing the same plant-shape they saw on Instagram once. What if I told you that imperfections in our botanical beauties is just as great and healthy as these so called ‘perfect’ plants?

It’s time to let go of our irrational beauty standards we set for plants, and embrace the type of wonderful chaos nature can bring into our homes, let me tell you why, and how!

Tyranny of Perfection

In our daily lives, we already struggle with ‘being close to perfect’, we want to excel at our jobs, we want to look pretty, we need to have time under control and more. These are all versions of perfection that are set by society and nearly impossible to achieve. It’s an unnecessary pressure that thrives us to be ‘perfect’, while there is just no such thing. You come as you are, already perfect, just like all the plants we so pressure to look lush, green and flawless.

Thriving for excellent looks for our houseplants drains our and the plants energy in many ways. Even in our optimized greenhouse, plants are rarely perfect yet we go to great lengths to approach it. Brown tips, curling leaves, weird air roots, little spots on leaves and more, are all removed to give the costumer the illusion of a perfect product. While at home, it is completely normal for your new purchase to become a bit more chaotic and wild after some time. So don’t stress that you’re doing something wrong immediately, nature is just doing it’s thing and don’t let the pressure of perfection get to you.

Beauty of Imperfection

Natural properties and wild growth are great examples of imperfect beauty. Let’s go over some plant elements that are often unwanted and give you a reason to embrace them:

• Yellowing or brown leaves: Throughout the plants life, it will grow many new leaves, but also lose some. Once a leaf has been damaged, or the plant cannot sustain it, it will start to wilt and yellow, eventually turning brown and falling. Many plant-owners will cut this leaf off as soon as the discoloration sets in, because it may look ugly. Although the plant is still actively absorbing nutrients from it before letting it drop, trying to recover as many useful elements before saying goodbye. If you cut it off before it can do so, you are actually hampering the plant’s recovery process. So let that yellow leaf hang to not remove any beneficial components. Do pay attention to the environment and care when your plant is turning yellow, it is often a sign of over/underwatering or heat stress. But your leafy companion should not be punished for its communication skills.

• Damaged leaves: There are many ways a leaf can become damaged. Maybe your cat had a taste, or you ripped it while moving it, or maybe it even survived a pest and now has some scars. These marks may look ugly in your eyes, but your prosperous plant can handle them perfectly. By isolating the wound from the rest of the body, infections are prevented, this will appear as brown edges near the breakage and will act as scar tissue. These holes or tears are no death sentence for the plant, or even the leaf they appear on, so there is no need to remove the leaf if it is damaged just a bit. Even if the organ is too damaged to be maintained, it will yellow and wilt, as the text above explains. So instead of cutting that ‘broken’ leaf of immediately, give your leafy friends some time to heal and recover.

• Curvy stems: When plants grow older and larger, some may grow past their support systems (moss poles, bamboo sticks…), and without the guides for growth, the stem might start curving in unwanted directions. This however has no effect on the health of your plant, although it might look a bit goofy. It can be helpful to provide some extra support, as the shift in weight may cause your pot to lose balance. But there is no need to cut this twisty bit off, instead embrace the way your plants is making the best of things, and go for that natural look. Another option is to propagate this overgrown part and plant it in the same pot to create a more lush look, or find a longer moss pole to support it.

• Wild Air Roots: In nature, air roots act as extra support and water uptake. By either settling on moist surfaces, or descending into open water they provide an extra source for hydration. When they do so, they attach themselves to tree trunks or moss to lift the rest of the plant up. To look for such surfaces or pools, the roots start ‘probing’ in different directions, which may look wild and weird. However this is a completely natural process and there is no reason to cut them off. Unnecessary cutting gives infections a chance to penetrate the plants health, so it is best to just leave it be.

• Dried Scale-leaf: Scale leaves, or cataphylls are small structural elements that protect emerging young leaves while they develop. As these leaves grow older the cataphyll dries up and loses its function. You can of course remove these if you want, but there is really no need to do so. I feel like they are a nice visualization of all the hard work your plant has done to get to the size it is now.

Embracing Nature’s Chaos

I have now mentioned some ways that nature can become chaotic inside your own household, and how these elements are not bad at all for your branching buddies. I want to challenge you to let nature run its course, and be proud of the little imperfections your plants accumulate throughout their lifetime. It can be fun to document their journeys and the struggles they make it through. So go and be proud of your slightly ugly plants, because nature will only be perfect if we look at it through its own lens.

Written by your Plantloving biologist, Senne Note