Compact, thick-leaved and safe around cats and dogs, hand delivered same day in Brisbane
Cream and grey marbling splashed across thick green leaves
Rounded, high-gloss leaves marbled in cream and grey over deep green, no two marked the same way. They're thick enough to store their own water, so the plant holds that colouring through a fortnight of neglect and under office light.
Peperomia Obtusifolia Lemon Lime
Green centres running out to bright yellow-green edges
Thick, rounded leaves that start deep green at the midrib and lift to a clear yellow-green at the margin, so the whole plant reads brighter than its marbled sibling. It keeps that lift in a spot with no window nearby.
Both peperomia in our range are Peperomia obtusifolia, the species sold almost everywhere as the baby rubber plant. They share the same compact, thick-leaved habit and differ in colouring, so the choice comes down to which one suits the room it's going into.
Send a peperomia when the household has a cat or a dog, when the desk it's headed for sits nowhere near a window, or when the person receiving it is honest about forgetting to water things. All three are the plant's natural territory rather than compromises it tolerates.
It works as a thank you plant for a colleague, because it survives an office and a long weekend without anyone thinking about it. It's a sensible get well plant for a bedside table where something tall would be in the way, and an easy birthday plant gift for someone whose place is already crowded with green.
Yes, peperomia are non-toxic to cats and dogs. It's worth saying plainly, because several of the plants people reach for first are not: philodendron, pothos, peace lily and the rest of the Araceae carry calcium oxalate in the sap, and a chewed leaf leaves an animal drooling and off its food for a day or so. A peperomia on the same shelf is a non-event.
It isn't the only safe choice we deliver. Calathea brings patterned leaves with purple undersides and copes with a dimmer room, and fittonia is smaller again, netted all over in pink, red or white veins. Where a peperomia wins is neglect: the other two both want more attention than it does.
The thick leaves are the whole trick. A peperomia stores water in them the way a succulent does, which is why it shrugs off a fortnight with nobody around and why it holds its variegation under fluorescent light instead of fading to plain green. Office lighting is genuinely enough for it.
That's the reason to pick one over its pet-safe siblings. A fittonia wants humidity and lies down flat the moment it dries out. A calathea wants soil kept evenly moist and sulks at the edges when it isn't. A peperomia asks for neither, so it's the one to send when you can't vouch for the conditions at the other end.
Medium to bright indirect light, and it will hold on in less. Let the soil dry out between watering rather than keeping it damp, and cut back noticeably through winter when growth slows. Keep it in a small pot: peperomia have fine root systems and a pot with too much soil around them stays wet long enough to rot the base.
Usually thirst. Thick-leaved plants look fine right up until they don't, so limp leaves on a peperomia normally mean the soil went dry a while ago. Water it and it firms up over a day or two. If the soil is already wet and the leaves are drooping anyway, the problem is the opposite one and the roots are sitting in water, which is harder to come back from.
When the pot feels light. Lifting it tells you more than the calendar does, because the difference between a watered pot and a dry one is obvious in the hand. In a Brisbane summer that tends to land around once a week, and through winter it can stretch to a fortnight or more.
Here's the short version of what the plant wants and where it comes from.
Choose a pot on the product page before you check out, along with any giftware or a greeting card. A peperomia stays small, so it's the 125mm and 200mm sizes in our indoor plant pots range that fit, and a plain glazed one lets the leaf colour do the talking. The card message is one you write yourself at checkout.
Order before 12pm on a weekday, or before 10am on Saturday, and your peperomia goes out the same day. Our own couriers start their run in the early afternoon, and we aim to have business addresses delivered by 5pm and homes by 6pm, Monday to Saturday. Delivery is a flat $19.95 and there's no Sunday run. Check the address against the suburbs on our Brisbane delivery areas page before you order. We cover the inner east out through the bayside and into the Redlands, so a peperomia can land in Murarrie, Wynnum West or Ormiston on the day you order it.
Delivered by our own couriers
Flat $19.95 delivery
Gift wrapped as standard
Same day before 12pm
