Acanthaceae
Fittonia
The nerve plants — low creeping Acanthaceae from the rainforest floor, their leaves netted with white, silver or pink veins. Famous for fainting theatrically when dry and recovering within hours of a drink, which is less charming than it looks: by the time you can see the droop, the stomata have already shut.
Native to Southern tropical America
How Fittonia generally wants to be treated
Species pages start from this and record only where they differ.
- Light
- Bright indirect, never direct sun. It is a forest-floor plant and a specialist in what the canopy leaves behind — see the species page, because the mechanism is better than the advice.
- Water
- Keep the mix evenly moist. This is the plant that wilts flat and stands back up within hours, and it will do it repeatedly, but do not use it as a watering schedule.
- Humidity
- High, and this is the one care field its two best sources disagree on: the RHS calls humid air essential while NC State says medium and warns that leaves may wither if humidity is too high. The reconciling mechanism is in the RHS's own disease field — grey mould. So: humid, with air moving.
- Temperature
- Warm and stable, minimum 63 °F (17 °C). The RHS rates it H1A, which means under glass all year in a cool-temperate climate.
- Substrate
- A fine, moisture-retentive, free-draining mix. Shallow — it roots along the surface rather than down.
- Fertilizer
- A balanced feed at half strength through the growing season, sparingly. Small plant, small appetite.
- Propagation
- Stem cuttings root readily. One tissue-culture study got multiple shoots on a medium with no growth regulators at all, so rooting hormone is unlikely to be the limiting factor.
- Dormancy
- None. It slows in winter with the light.
- Common problems
-
- Dramatic collapse when dry — it recovers, but the stomata shut before the wilt is visible, so growth has already stopped
- Crisp brown leaf edges from dry air or from letting it go past the collapse point too often
- Grey mould in still, saturated air: the answer is air movement rather than less humidity
- Leggy stretched growth with barely-faded colour can be a response to light quality rather than starvation
- Leaf loss from cold; below 63 °F (17 °C) it sulks
In the collection
- Fittonia jade Fittonia albivenis 'Jade'