I first found my favorite houseplant at a neighborhood plant sale in Chicago.
I didn’t know what I was buying, but the seller assured me this plant with fuzzy dark green leaves and pale lavender flowers would do well on my porch all summer and near a window in my apartment the rest of the year.
It wasn’t until I’d had the plant for a few months and learned what a good houseplant it did make that I realized my plant hadn’t come with a label.
This was long before smart phones and plant ID apps, and it would take me years to learn the name of this South African beauty:
One of my favorite things about this plant is how easy it is to propagate through cuttings.
All I do is snip off a fresh stem with no flowers and drop it into a glass of water. Before long that stem will put out roots of its own, and I can pot it up for a friend.
I have found that this plant is often sold as an autumn “annual,” which is how I recently found it labeled at my local big-box garden center.
The good news is that this beautiful plant is NOT an annual, and will thrive indoors all winter in a bright spot.