10+ Areca Palm Benefits: Amazing Indoor Palm Plant

We all enjoy a touch of the tropical in our lives. Indoor plants have been around for a long time but sometimes a little touch of outdoors in the house adds a zing to your room in the best possible manner.

But how do we do this? Well, we can start with one of the basic forms of palms that can be brought into the house with ease, the Areca Palms!

What are we getting into?

The Areca Palm goes by many names, including golden cane palm, yellow palm, butterfly palm, or bamboo palm. The plant also goes by the scientific name of Dypsis lutescens. This plant, native to Madagascar, has become quite famous for adding a special vibe to your home.

Though palm trees are available only in a limited outdoor range, once you look for them, you’ll start noticing areca palms in interiors everywhere, from offices to shopping malls.

They are easy to grow and their lush greenery even helps remove some toxins from the air. Also for all those pet lovers out there, these beauties are non-toxic to both dogs and cats.

The plant can thrive at home at temperatures between 16°C to 24°C but sudden, swift temperature changes might harm the plant and can lead to brown spots on the leaves.

These plants also grow taller than a lot of other indoor plants. You can expect them to grow to a height of 6 to 10 feet.

Be careful with the amount of water the plant receives because overwatering and not draining the soil properly is the easiest way to kill this tropical beauty. Plant in well-draining potting soil, in a pot with drainage holes.

The areca palm is a relatively slow-growing indoor plant and would like to be somewhat root-bound, so it should only require repotting every two or three years.

Benefits of Areca Palm

Like many other indoor plants, the lush green areca palm has benefits that are worth mentioning.

1. Air Purifying Properties

The plant is known best to help purify the air inside your home and give you a fresh feeling all day long.

A study conducted by NASA on clear air proves that areca palms actively remove airborne toxins including formaldehyde, xylene, and toluene from the air, all of which are known to affect your lungs in the long run.

This helps clear your indoor air of pollution and toxins, making it much more secure and cleaner for you to breathe, protecting you and your family.

2. Increases Oxygen

The natural process of photosynthesis dictates that plants absorb carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen during the day. So, naturally, all living houseplants replenish the oxygen in your indoor air.

Something worth adding is the fact that the increased surface area of leaves helps speed up the process and adds more oxygen to the surroundings in general. And we know by now that the plant in question with a large number of green leaves produces a greater amount of oxygen compared to less leafy houseplants.

3. Areca Palms Improve Indoor Humidity

As was mentioned before, these plants do not need a lot of water, water might even harm them. So, to prevent themselves from being exposed to too much moisture, areca palms tend to release moisture through their palm fronds.

If you live in a dry region, areca palms are known to be a wonderful and natural way to increase the humidity of the air inside a dry home.

With an areca palm, you can help prevent the air of your home from drying out when you are living in an arid environment, running the air conditioning, running a furnace, running the air conditioning, or using a wood-burning stove.

4. Creates Positive Energy in Feng Shui

With its soft and full palm leaves, the areca palm happens to be one of the best examples of a good feng shui plant.

Feng Shui is a system of laws considered to govern spatial arrangement and orientation with the flow of energy (chi), and favorable or unfavorable effects are taken into account when sitting and designing buildings.

According to Vaastu, this plant is known to attract positive energy to your space along with the blessing of wealth, prosperity, and peace.

5. Areca Palms are Low-Maintenance and Easy to Care For

Compared to a lot of other indoor plants, areca palms are quite low-maintenance and easy to care for.

The primary concerns for planting and nurturing areca palms are making sure that your plant has enough water but is potted in a container and soil drains easily but keeps retaining some moisture.

But note that in spring and summer, you will need to water your areca palm slightly more often than in the months of fall and winter when the plant is dormant. The plant does not require any sort of repotting for 2 or 3 years altogether, adding to the convenience of the plant parent.

6. A Blessing in Modern Decor

One of the many benefits of areca palm and probably the most often cited reason for its purchase and nurturing is the beautification and decor value the plant holds. Areca palms make one of the most beautiful houseplants that have vibrant green, soft, and lush palm fronds.

In addition to being pretty, they are also absolutely stunning in size. They can grow up to six to 10 inches every year, and indoor plants that are properly cared for can reach five to eight feet in height at maturity.

Areca palms are also great for warming up an empty corner in your house or creating a striking centerpiece in a large yet vacant foyer.

7. One of the easiest to propagate

These are one of the easiest plants to propagate. They can be grown from seeds but this usually takes a long time for germination and the beginning of initial growth. The most recommended method is to propagate plants by splitting them into different pots during the re-potting process.

The splitting is also fairly easy. All one has to do is divide the root ball between sections of individual canes (or stem sprouts). Depending on the size of your plant, you can grow several new plants from the original one.

8. Can Help With Allergies

Areca palms are one of the best plants to be in your house if you have allergies. They tend to have lower pollen counts that most likely won’t worsen allergy symptoms.

In addition to this, they can themselves lower the pollen count of the air indoors by keeping the humidity in check (increasing it), which results in the fall of allergen count in the house quickly.

9. The Plants are Drought Resistant

Although the preferred environment of an areca palm is usually a slightly moist or humid soil environment at all times, they are actually surprisingly fairly drought tolerant (at least once they have established their roots properly).

However, if you bring in a new plant, don’t deprive it of humidity and moisture just yet, it’s best to keep its soil moist. However, once the plant has established roots in the given pot, it will be able to tolerate a little neglect with respect to water.

10. Help Reduce Stress

A quality that is honed by most plants, in general, is their ability to induce a sense of peace and calm in the house that they are in. Houseplants have been shown to help reduce stress by allowing people to feel more comfortable, calm, soothed, and natural in indoor environments.

The physiological aspect of gardening and nurturing has been shown to lower your heartbeat and bring in peace and calm.

11. May Boost Your Productivity

Be it your office, or in the current situation, work from home, the presence of living plants is known to boost your productivity. Studies show that employee productivity increased by 15% after indoor plants were introduced to an office.

It is true that plants were once, and still are, essential for human survival. Today, this connection can be observed by an overall reduction of stress and an increase in calmness and well-being.

Additionally, this has effects on an individual’s ability to concentrate and enables them to focus more on the task.

12. Enhance Your Room

Indoor plants don’t just add color and buoyancy to your home, they also make the place more liveable in certain ways. In addition to increasing room humidity, plants shield unsightly areas and moderate room temperature.

Once you decide on the vibe that you want from a room, accessorizing it becomes a cup of tea. It is even easier to add zing to the room by selecting the right kind of green beauties.

13. Pet safe:

It’s hard to find a plant that is low maintenance and safe from pets, fortunately, areca palm is one of those plants approved by ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) as a pet-friendly plant. So, your beloved furry and green friend both can reside under the same roof without any hesitation.

14. Improves memory and helps to concentrate:

Plants (including areca palm) have proven that potting them inside your house or near you can improve overall mental health including increasing memory and concentration by 20%.

15. Helps in peaceful sleep:

This large palm not only gives a peaceful tropical vibe in your room but also helps you to have a better night’s sleep. They purify the air and help you to breathe better. Areca palm also acts as a natural humidifier, so those who are suffering from sinus can benefit from this feature.

FAQs

What are the other names of the Areca palm?

Although the areca palm is mostly known by the said name, but it’s also known as the butterfly palm, golden cane palm, and bamboo palm.

Is Areca palm good as an indoor plant?

Areca palm is easy to care plant and has a forgiving nature to some adverse situations, which is why they is popularly used as indoor decor.

How often do you water Areca palm?

Areca doesn’t require much water especially if they are growing indoors. However, water needs depend on the size of the plant- in summer they generally need to be watered once every 10-14 days, and in winter it’s even less, generally once every 21-30 days.

Conclusion

From everything that has been gathered in the points mentioned above, we can clearly understand that Areca palms have a wonderful utility that ranges from being an ornamental touch to a plant that helps battle allergies as well as helps improve your mental health.

So what are you waiting for? Get an Areca Palm for your home now!