I’ve had this Diffenbachia for about two weeks, and it looks like she came with a flower. What should I expect? Should I cut the flower off? I read somewhere that you should do that for plants that are prized for their foliage so her energy doesn’t go to the flower. Thanks for any thoughts. I’m grateful for this community. I am learning so much!
I had an aglaonema (very similar plant. They have the same type of sap and flowers as well) and from my experience with mine, it’s a good idea to cut the flowers off for multiple reasons. For one, they release a sap that can be very irritating to the skin, some describing it as feeling like broken fiberglass on your hands. It’s a self-defense mechanism for the plant, but not so great for us. I definitely recommend using gloves, having separate gloves and tools when dealing with your plant and not using the same tools for any of your other plants to avoid risk of spreading the sap onto other plants, and beheading it as close to the bottom of the stem as possible. The flowers also aren’t very pretty (imo), and it’s true that it helps your plant focus on growing elsewhere, such as focusing on growing more leaves. It’s a great sign of health if it’s flowering, though. Just please be careful with it, especially if you have pets. It’s very toxic to cats and dogs. I always wore gloves when handling mine, and I’m speaking in last tense not because mine died, but because despite how low maintenance and healthy mine was, it was just too risky to have around with my very curious dog (who has an affinity for knocking things over to try to reach them better and eat them).
I would also like to mention that you might wanna see if your dieffenbachia is actually an aglaonema. Again, they’re very similar plants, but the patterning on the leaves definitely looks more like it resembles an aglaonema (Chinese evergreen) instead rather than a dieffenbachia. There’s a lot of different varieties. Mine was an aglaonema “super white”, for reference.
1 like https://links.getplanta.com/WVqG Here’s one that might match yours
1 likeThank you, Adrian! How would I know whether it’s aglaonema versus diffenbachia? I have an aglaonema, but it’s a different variety.
For one, the size and the leaves. The leaves of aglaonema are typically smaller and less elongated than dieffenbachia. And your other aglaonema is definitely an aglaonema. They’re very pretty, and honestly really low maintenance. I believe more so than dieffenbachia, so if it seems to be growing with little maintenance or watering, that’s likely why. The one you have ID’d as “Siam Aurora” looks like a correct ID
1 like https://links.getplanta.com/WVqG https://links.getplanta.com/9gbe https://links.getplanta.com/n9Cs Here’s three other varieties that look like close matches to the aglaonema you posted about. As long as you have it ID’d as an aglaonema, it probably shouldn’t matter which variety out of these three that you ID it as, as their care should be practically identical outside of higher maintenance varieties, which yours doesn’t seem to match.
1 like