Does a peacock plant flower indoors?

Just as decorative as its flamboyant namesake, the peacock plant brings glamour and a dash of drama.

Also known as Calathea makoyana, the exotic beauty’s natural home is the rainforest areas of Brazil – particularly the steamy subtropical south.

Outside of tropical regions, it can be cultivated outdoors with a little effort, but it’s most often grown as a houseplant.

It prefers the generally warmer temperatures in our homes (and deserves to be regularly admired), so it’s a perfect indoor plant.

Usually grown for their foliage, peacock plants can produce clusters of small white flowers several times throughout the year. However, it’s rare to see one flower indoors.

Fabulous foliage – how about the flowers?

Like its cousins the prayer plant and zebra plant, the peacock plant is part of the Maranta group. 

All members of this exclusive club boast spectacular ornamental foliage, which is what they’re known and grown for.

The peacock plant’s leaves are paper-thin and exquisitely detailed, with unusual oval markings that resemble the ornate feathers of a peacock’s tail.

However the plant’s flowers, if and when they appear, are less ornamental.

When grown in the wild, it can develop small clusters of tiny white asymmetrical flowers, resembling a little basket of blooms.  

FUN FLOWER FACT: because of the way the flowers grow, the peacock plant’s scientific name Calathea is taken from the Greek kalathos, meaning basket.

If you’re growing the plant indoors, it’s unlikely you’ll get to see them for yourself though. Flowers seldom appear on small pot-grown peacock plants. 

Mature outdoor specimens are the most likely candidates to produce blooms, and these can crop up at any time of year. 

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Can you make an indoor peacock plant flower?

There’s no special tip or trick that will make a peacock plant flower indoors. Beyond keeping it as healthy and happy as you can, it’s really down to the plant. 

These plants can be a little tricky to care for, even for seasoned houseplant enthusiasts. If you manage to keep your plant alive and well, you’re already winning – flowers or not! 

Give it plenty of warmth, humidity and bright indirect light, feed it with a general houseplant fertiliser every couple of weeks in the growing season and keep the soil moist. 

You may be lucky and flowers may come, or they may not, but either way the plant will earn its place in your home.

So don’t be downhearted at the prospect of a flowerless peacock plant. These beautiful specimens more than compensate with their wonderful showy leaves. 

There’s good reason why, like nearly all the Calatheas, peacock plants are overwhelmingly grown as foliage houseplants.  

Where the flowers are small and insignificant, the leaves are truly stunning – and no question the main attraction of these magnificent plants.

Have you beaten the odds and had flowers on your indoor peacock plant? Kudos and bragging rights are yours – drop me a comment below!