Expert: Darlene K. Kittle - 3/3/2005

Question
Hi!

I bought this peace lily a month ago.  It's in my family room which is maintained at about 70 degrees F night and day.  The plant in on an end table, about 6 feet from a south-facing window, and I've found that my house is quite dry (in MD) so I have to water it about every other day, but I checked today and there is no root rot and all the roots look white and healthy.  Since I've had it, it seems very happy; growing vigorously and I rejoiced when it started sprouting a whole lot of new white spathe buds.  However: both the opened spathes and the newer forming ones have now begun to have a greenish caste.  It's like someone put green food coloring in the water and it went up to the spathes and turned them green.  I can see the "veins" as it were where the green coloring is.  Most of the green is towards the center of each spathe.  In the spathes that this is most pronounced in, the little accompanying flower has also turned VERY green.

The only thing I did differently was to give it some miracle grow (a tiny amount, as directed on the box) for about three waterings in a row.  (The Miracle Grow box says that some gardeners like to put the stuff in each watering, so I thought, "Why not?"  I read in my guidebook that peace lilies are not heavy feeders... so perhaps if I cool it on the fertilizer, white spathes will result?

Thanks in advance for your answer.

Answer
Marcia,

As peace lilly blooms get older they normally do turn green before turn brown. At the point that you decide they are ugly feel free to snip them off at the point where the flower stem comes off of a leaf stem. As for the younger flowers turning green I do not know what is causing that. I would reccommend that you stop fertilizing for awhile and see if that stops the greening. The flowers normally last about 2 months from first appearance to the point I feel it is time to trim them off. The beauty of peace lillies is that they bloom all year long. Once a year I reccommend that you give it 2 teaspoons of epsom salts sprinkled on top of the soil before watering.  That will encourage it to keep it blooming year around. Good luck.

Darlene