Polka Dot Plant : a beautiful houseplant

Houseplants add unique style to any room's design. Many decorative flowers are easy to grow at home. Gardeners especially like hypoestes. It has bright colors, needs little care, and creates a fun mood.

Hypoestes is a pretty plant from Madagascar. It's in the Acanthus family. This plant looks like a bush with colorful leaves. The leaves have bright colors and "rainbow freckles". It grows to about 50 cm tall.

Hypoestes leaves are oval. Some have smooth edges, others pointed. They are usually 5 to 8 cm long and up to 4 cm wide. The leaves have many dots of red, white, pink, or purple. This is the plant's best feature.

The plant is pretty even when it's not flowering. But, it gets really nice when it blooms.

The flowers don't last long. They make a mess when they fall. So, it's best to clean up the plant during and after flowering.

If you don't, the plant will get tall and thin. Its leaves will also get small.

Different hypoestes types bloom at different times. To keep your room colorful, use several kinds. Flowers grow at the top of the plant. They look like tubes in the leaf joints. Hypoestes flowers are small and light purple. They often blend in with the bright leaves. Some types die after blooming. Many gardeners cut off the buds before they open.

If you leave the flowers, they make seed pods. Seeds that fall will grow quickly.

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