The Crossandra is a small evergreen shrub. When not blooming its dark, glossy green leaves makes some mistaken for a gardenia.
A flowering Crossandra will bloom approximately 6 months out of a year. The individual salmon-colored flowers grow from the top of a spike. The blooms arrange themselves into a flat, overlapping flower head.
Grown by someone who understands it, the crossandra can be a thing of rare beauty. It is not pretty when its requirements are not meant and given the wrong environment.
A Challenge To Grow
Once in the throes of beginner’s luck, I wrote a glowing article about crossandra and sprinkled it with praise. I’m glad the article never was printed.
Anyone reading it would have thought the crossandra was as easy as a petunia, and if they had tried my advice, they would have concluded that I was crazy.
I had scarcely completed the article when I hit the jackpot of all the troubles that could plague a crossandra grower.
One plant, bearing 28 flower spikes and due to open them soon, was suddenly covered with a blight that blackened and curled the leaves, and in a few days, it was dead.
Plants in direct or filtered sunlight wilted rapidly; others in bright windows without sun refused to bloom though they had previously done so in the same locations.
Strong seedlings mysteriously collapsed, lost leaves, and died.
So I have reviewed the case for the crossandra with more sober judgment, and now I believe that success with the plant depends mainly upon the amount of sun it receives.
Further, I believe that the choice of lighting depends upon the season.
In her weekly newspaper column about indoor plants, Katherine B. Walker says that even professional growers are not always aware of the plant’s need for high temperatures and humidity, which often results in disappointment.
I think she has hit the crux of the whole matter for deciding when and when not to grow the plant in the sun.
Remember that crossandra is native to India and the East Indies, and don’t forget that it likes heat. I believe it prefers a 75° to 80° degrees Fahrenheit, but few of us want our homes that hot in the winter.
So it is in winter, then, that the crossandra will take its sun straight and undiluted and bloom profusely.
Direct sun will warm the plant to its liking, even though the surrounding area is cooler than it prefers.
In spring, when the sun becomes stronger, filtering the light with curtains or the shade of other plants is in order.
By early summer, when the temperature indoors is nearly equal to that outdoors, a place in good light out of all sun will be wise, lest the plant wilt.
A Southern Exposure
My crossandras do best near a south window, and here I leave them all year round. In summer, the sun does not touch them.
In the fall, as the sun swings lower in the south, the plants adjust gradually to increased light, and by winter, they glory in the warm rays of the full sun.
Consequently, I do not have to shift them from window to window with the changing seasons. They bloom sparsely in summer, but winter is when I want crossandra blossoms anyway.
If the room’s atmosphere is dry, it helps to humidify it. Much of my success with crossandras must be owed to their home in the kitchen, where cooking steam supplies ample moisture to the atmosphere. A weekly stir to wash off foliage also furnishes humidity.
Keep the soil moist, especially when flower spikes are forming. I do not mean sopping wet. I water my crossandras a little each day, even when it is cloudy, all warnings to the contrary.
If I neglect this, I find the top soil is dry by night. Let the soil go dry too often. and your flower spikes will wither and die.
There are three means for acquiring more plants—cuttings, air-wraps (either of which can be done any time of year), and seeds.
I agree with Mrs. Walker, who feels that plants produced from your seeds make stronger, healthier specimens.
The flower spike becomes the seed bearer as the blossoms fade. Allow only one or two pods to ripen per plant, as more than this may interfere with bloom until the pods are removed.
When the pod begins to brown, stop the weekly syringing. Water touching the ripe pod will explode, scattering the seeds.
Seeds will germinate in damp sphagnum moss or vermiculite, but don’t plant them before June. Seeds generally refuse to sprout unless they have constant 70° to 80° degrees Fahrenheit warmth.
It will be a long time before the last word has been said on growing crossandras in this country, where it is fairly new.
Before that day comes, the plant will be both praised and criticized. In the meantime, try my way of growing crossandra; and if it doesn’t work, perhaps you will discover a system of your own.
44659 by Keith S. Phillips