One plant that has plenty of aesthetic appeal is the cactus, a member of the succulent family. Browse Instagram and you’ll find over 2 million posts tagged #cactus, a Mr. Cacti fan account with nearly 250k followers, and Cactus Magazine, which claims to be “The Most Succulent Collection of Instagram.” Cactuses may be all the rage right now, but can they filter the air at all through that spiky exterior? “This notion that only some plants filter the air, and others don’t, is actually outdated,” Erin Marino, the director of marketing at The Sill, a popular NYC plant shop, says, explaining that the infamous NASA study didn’t tell the whole story. “When NASA needed a cheap and easy way to filter the air on space stations, they chose the most common houseplants at the time to test (snake plant, English ivy, pothos, etc.),” Marino continues. “When they shared their findings, reporters wrote about the study but misinterpreted it as ’these are the only plants that filter the air’ instead of ‘all plants filter the air, but these are the only plants NASA had the time and budget to test.’” “Because of their resiliency, people often assume that cactuses require no care,” says Jeanne Luna of New Orleans–based plant design shop Luna Botanicals. “However, this can cause them to go into dormancy, resulting in a less attractive appearance, and no growth.” If you want your cactus to thrive (and maybe even flower, depending on the species), you should do your best to mimic the desert conditions it came from, and the way you care for it should ebb and flow throughout the year. In the colder winter months, place it somewhere dry and on the colder side, and keep watering to a minimum. Then, in the spring and summer months, bring it out of dormancy by giving it more light and watering once a week or so. If you’re lucky, your indoor cactus can live up to 10 years! Nothing prickly about that. Emma received her B.A. in Environmental Science & Policy with a specialty in environmental communications from Duke University. In addition to penning over 1,000 mbg articles on topics from the water crisis in California to the rise of urban beekeeping, her work has appeared on Grist, Bloomberg News, Bustle, and Forbes. She’s spoken about the intersection of self-care and sustainability on podcasts and live events alongside environmental thought leaders like Marci Zaroff, Gay Browne, and Summer Rayne Oakes.
