Acanthaceae
Strobilanthes
A large Asian genus that recently absorbed the plant sold as Hemigraphis. The purple waffle plant is now Strobilanthes alternata — and Hemigraphis itself still exists as a genus, with 31 accepted species; it simply no longer contains this one. Grown for puckered metallic-purple foliage, and an escaped weed in eleven territories.
Native to Tropical Asia; the waffle plant is known wild only as a cultigen
How Strobilanthes generally wants to be treated
Species pages start from this and record only where they differ.
- Light
- Bright indirect. NC State's structured field says full sun but its own prose says direct sun bleaches and burns — follow the prose.
- Water
- Evenly moist, never waterlogged. Indoors it fails by sitting wet and losing its colour rather than by drying out.
- Humidity
- No figure is published for it by any extension service. High humidity suits it; that is as precise as the record gets.
- Temperature
- Warm. It dies below about 50 °F (10 °C), which is the practical floor.
- Substrate
- An ordinary free-draining potting mix. Nothing special is documented.
- Fertilizer
- Not documented at extension level for this plant. A balanced feed at half strength in growth is the conventional approach and this record does not dress it up as sourced.
- Propagation
- Cuttings or clump division, and that is effectively the only route — outside its native range it appears to reproduce vegetatively only.
- Dormancy
- Not documented. Nothing describes a rest period.
- Common problems
-
- Loss of the purple as light drops — the colour is the first thing to go and the earliest warning
- Rot in a mix kept wet, which indoors is the commonest way to lose it
- Bleached or scorched leaves in direct sun
- Cold damage below 50 °F (10 °C)
- Do not compost it outdoors in a warm climate: it spreads mainly through dumped garden waste and forms dense carpets that blanket forest understoreys
In the collection
- Purple waffle plant Strobilanthes alternata (Burm.f.) Moylan ex J.R.I.Wood