Houseplant · Arecaceae
Lady Palm
Rhapis excelsa
Slow-growing, shade-friendly, and safe around pets, the lady palm is about as easygoing as indoor palms get.
Bright indirect
55–81°F · 13–27°C
USDA 9–11
4–15 ft · 1.2–4.6 m
Overview
The lady palm is a clumping fan palm that comes from the shady forests of southern China and Vietnam, where it grows down under the bigger trees. That's really why it does so well indoors, where the light is never all that strong. It puts up slim, bamboo-like canes wrapped in dark fiber, and each one is topped with glossy fans of broad leaf segments.
Here's the nice part: it grows slowly, so it's not going to take over the room. A lady palm keeps its shape for years and just fills out little by little, sending up quiet offshoots from the base until you've got a full, leafy clump. Indoors it usually sits around 6 feet, though it can get taller if you give it the years and the space.
What really makes it a keeper is how tough and forgiving it is. It'll put up with low light, plain old household air, and a fair bit of forgetting, and it's non-toxic to people and pets. Give it bright indirect light and steady water and it'll look great, but miss a beat here and there and it won't hold it against you.
Care
The short version: bright indirect light works best, though it's fine in shade and low light, and you keep the soil evenly moist while it's growing and a bit drier in winter. Feed it lightly, give it normal room humidity, and let it stay a little root-confined; it's slow and doesn't ask for much.
Light
Lady palm likes bright indirect light best, but here's the thing, it's one of the few palms that'll also take medium light, partial shade, and even real low light. Just keep it out of harsh direct sun, which scorches the fronds. In a dimmer spot it just grows slower, it doesn't get sick.
Water
Through spring and summer, keep the mix evenly moist and water freely, letting the top dry out a little between good soakings. Ease off in winter, and don't ever let the pot sit in standing water. Twice a year or so, give it a heavy drench to flush out the fertilizer salts.
Soil
Put it in a rich, porous, well-drained mix with lots of organic matter, and an African violet type blend does the job. It likes things a touch acidic, a pH of 5.0 to 6.0, so skip the limey or heavy soils.
Temperature
Normal room warmth is what it wants, ideally 55°F to 81°F (13°C to 27°C). Bring it inside before it gets cold out, because it really doesn't want to sit anywhere near freezing.
Humidity
Regular household air is totally fine, so there's no number to chase here. It handles dry rooms, and the only clue it wants more moisture is brown leaf tips, which a bit of extra humidity helps head off.
Feeding
This slow grower barely needs feeding at all. A balanced liquid or slow-release fertilizer at low rates, just during the spring and summer growth, is plenty. Overdo it and you'll cause more harm than good, since overfeeding is the usual reason for brown tips.
Pruning
Cut off any dead or damaged canes and fronds right at the base. Don't cut the growing tip of a living cane, though, because a topped cane won't grow back; the clump just renews itself from new shoots at the soil.
Repotting
Only repot every 2 to 3 years, and only once the roots have filled the pot. It actually likes being a bit root-confined, so there's no rush to bump it into something way bigger.
Size & spacing
Indoors it usually gets to around 6 feet, but the species runs anywhere from 4 to 15 feet (1.2 to 4.5 m) tall and spreads 6 to 15 feet (1.8 to 4.5 m) wide as the clump fills in. Leave it a bit of room so the fronds can arch out without crowding.
Troubleshooting
The lady palm hardly ever gives you trouble, and when it does, the leaves usually tell you what's up. There are really just two things to watch for: brown tips and pest bumps. Match what you're seeing below and step in early, while it's still an easy fix.
Sticky film, yellow speckles, or little bumps on the fronds
See little bumps tucked into the fibrous leaf bases? That's usually scale insects, the main pest on lady palms, and they're easy to miss down in there. Fine webbing with pale, speckled leaves is a different story, that's spider mites showing up when the air's warm and dry. Move the plant away from your others, wipe the scale off and hit it with horticultural oil or insecticidal soap, and rinse the fronds to knock the mites back.
Fix:
- Isolate the plant from other houseplants
- Wipe or wash off scale and treat with horticultural oil or insecticidal soap, repeating as needed
- Raise humidity and rinse foliage to discourage spider mites
- Inspect new growth and leaf bases regularly
Older lower leaves turning brown at the tips
Nine times out of ten this comes down to too much fertilizer, which leaves salts sitting in the mix and shows up on the oldest leaves first. Dry air or stingy watering can do it too, just more evenly across the plant. So drench the pot a couple of times to rinse the salts out, back off the feeding, and keep the soil evenly damp.
Fix:
- Drench the pot heavily and repeatedly to leach excess salts (do this about twice a year)
- Reduce fertilizer to low rates and only during active growth
- Keep the mix evenly moist and avoid letting it fully dry
- Trim only the dead tip tissue if desired
Toxicity
Got curious pets? Good news, because the lady palm is non-toxic right across the board. The ASPCA says it's safe for cats and dogs, and nothing in it is a problem for horses, rabbits, livestock, birds, or people. Worst case, a pet chews a frond and gets a quick, mild stomachache from the fiber, and that's really it.
Safe for
People · Cats · Dogs · Horses · Rabbits · Livestock · Birds
Cats None
Good news for cat people: the ASPCA calls this palm non-toxic to cats. If your cat chews on a frond, the fiber might give it a mildly upset stomach for a bit, and then that's that.
Dogs None
Dogs are on the safe list too, per the ASPCA. Eat a whole lot of foliage and a dog might drool a little or have a soft stool, but honestly nothing beyond that.
Horses Safe
There's nothing here that would hurt a horse. The fronds are pretty tough and fibrous, so a horse won't bother with them anyway, and they wouldn't poison one that did.
Rabbits Safe
Rabbits are fine around it, since none of the plant is poisonous to them. A big mouthful of the coarse leaves could loosen things up for a day, and that's about it.
Livestock Safe
Cattle, goats, and sheep can hang around it no problem. There's no toxin in the fronds, just fiber that's hard to digest if they overdo it.
Birds Safe
It's a safe one to keep near pet birds. Nothing in the foliage is going to bother them.
People Safe
It won't poison people either, which is a big part of why it's such a popular indoor palm. Nobody grows it to eat, though, so there's really no reason to try a bite.
Varieties
Most of the time you'll find lady palm sold as the plain green species, but there are a couple of forms worth knowing by name.
'Variegata'
You'll spot it by the creamy white stripes on the leaves, and it grows even slower than the plain green one while getting by on less light and less feeding.
Rhapis humilis (reed rhapis / slender lady palm)
It's a close cousin with taller, skinnier canes and more of those narrow leaf segments than R. excelsa has.
How to propagate
The simplest way to get more lady palm is to split up a clump that's already going, since it naturally sends up new shoots from the base. You can grow it from seed too, but that's the slow, fussy road.
DivisionEasy
Spring · Several months to root and resume active growth
Want more of this palm? The easy way is to split up an established clump, which works nicely because it spreads by offshoots from the base. Lift a rooted sucker in spring with as much root as you can save, try not to hurt the parent, and pot it up just big enough for the roots. Then give it several months to settle in and get going again before you expect much.
SeedModerate
When ripe seed is available · Slow; germination and growth take a long time
You can start it from seed too, but it's a slow, fiddly business. The plant is dioecious, so you'll need both a male and a female just to get seed that works, and even after that the germination and early growth really drag over many months.
Myths
Lady palm needs constant high humidity to survive indoors.
Not really, since this palm is quite happy in regular household air and doesn't need much humidity at all. Sure, it likes a damp room, but dry air mostly just gives you brown leaf tips, not a dying plant, so there's no need to park a humidifier next to it.
A cut or topped lady palm cane will branch and regrow from its cut.
Nope, because each cane grows from a single tip, and once you cut that tip the cane is done. What happens instead is that the clump renews itself from offshoots at the base, so you cut the spent canes low and let fresh ones come up on their own.