PILF
Marjorie

ZZ Plant

$32
Grade ALight 1
6″ pot · Tax included · No account

No window? This is the one. Water once a month — there are fat roots under the soil holding a reserve — and otherwise ignore it. It prefers that.

No window? This is the one.
Once a month. It stores its own.
A month is fine. Six weeks is fine.
Not for chewing. Keep it up high if something at home chews plants.
Where Marjorie came from
A rhizome split off a Wicker Park ZZ on September 12 and potted. Shelf-ready by late October.
The Wicker Park shelf — where everything starts. Everyone on this shelf.
The most common way people kill this one

Overwatering. It would rather go dry for a month than sit wet for a week. If the soil’s damp, wait.

How big it gets

Two or three feet, and it’ll take years. New stems push up from the soil a few times a year and unfurl over a couple of weeks.

What it doesn’t get along with

Cats and dogs: no. Chewing it means a sore, irritated mouth and drooling. Keep it where nothing chews.

Direct sun. It’ll scorch in a window that gets the afternoon beam. Radiators and heating vents dry the air and the soil faster than you’d think — a foot or two away is enough.

A pot with no drainage hole, and anyone who waters on a schedule. Both drown it.

What it’s trying to tell you
A stem going yellow from the bottomToo much water. Stop for a month.
A stem flopping overToo much water, or too dark for too long.
Nothing happeningNormal. It almost never asks for anything.

Every symptom, every plant, on one page.

Where it came from

Some are divided from a ZZ in Wicker Park. Some come from a Chicago grower and spend two weeks in quarantine in Wicker Park before they go anywhere. The tag on the pot says which.

Grown in Wicker Park, Chicago. Most shelves are a few blocks from where it was potted.

If you’ve killed a C, start here

A C wants a rhythm — a fern, a calathea, a fiddle leaf fig. Losing one says nothing about you. This one is a Grade A: it forgives a month of nothing.

The list for people who’ve killed a C. · How the grades work.

Something else? hello@pilf.me. Replies come from a person, usually the same day.