Platycerium care guide

Platycerium plants, also known as Staghorn Ferns, are epiphytes. Epiphytes are basically plants that live on other plants, mostly trees. Not as a parasite, but purely for support.

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SPORES:

Platycerium plants are ferns and don't produce showy flowers like other houseplants. Instead, they produce spores on the underside of their fronds, which i want to talk about and can be quite long text with all types of botanical terms, so if you aren't interested in that, scroll down to the next section😁

 

Make sure you are sitting down for this one.

Ferns have sex! This sounds very weird, i know but let me explain. So, in a short version, when a fern drops its spores out of its Spori and they germinate succesfully, they enter a stage called "gametophyte". The gametophyte then produces female (Archegonia) and a male (Antheridium) reproductive organs. Actual fern sperm from the male organs go into the female ones and fertilizes eggs inside, and then develops into a new fern plant called a "sporophyte". Ferns start producing spores when they reach maturity. For more about that, click here or here.

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WATERING:

You can grow your Platycerium in both soil (but that is not what the plant prefers), but the most efficient way of growing is if you grow it as a kokedama or mounted on a piece of wood and it's roots in moist moss, also kind of like a kokedama.

If in soil, water once a week, but water every 4-5 days or whenever the moss looks dry if it is grown in moss. For watering with moss, fully submerging it in water for 10 minutes and squeezing out the excess water is the best way to go, and don't forget to fertilize every now and then. You can also click here on this green text to see how i water it.

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LIGHT REQUIREMENTS:

 These plants do appreciate a good amount of light, but not direct sunlight. Since people often have these plants mounted on a piece of wood and hanging on a wall, i recommend pointing a grow light at it.

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PROPAGATION:

Platycerium sometimes produce little pups (baby plants on the side) which you can divide and mount/pot up seperately, but you can also propagate through spores. When you succesfully harvest the spores, place them in a sterile and moist pot of peat moss and keep the container warm, close the lid and let nature do it's thing.