Houseplant, a potted plant that is easily grown indoors. Houseplants provide decoration for the home and a hobby for the indoor gardener. Many varieties of foliage (leafy) plants, flowering plants, and succulent plants are suitable as houseplants.

Some of the many popular foliage plants grown for their attractive and often unusual leaves are palms, the rubber plant, the Chinese evergreen, the fiddle-leaf fig, ivies, and philodendrons. Many foliage plants, such as the dracaenas, dieffenbachias, and calatheas, have variegated (patterned) leaves. Among those whose leaves are splashed with color are caladiums, coleus, and crotons.

African violets, azaleas, gloxinias, geraniums, begonias, cyclamens, and the shrimp plant are flowering plants popular for their colorful seasonal or year-round blossoms. The group of houseplants known as succulents includes the aloes, crassulas, echeverias, houseleek, sedums, and the many species of thorny and spiny cacti. Succulents are grown most often as ornamental curiosities because of their unusual forms and their thick, odd-shaped, fleshy leaves or stems. Many succulents also bear blossoms.

Unlike plants grown outdoors, house-plants must be provided with all of their basic needs—light, appropriate temperature, humidity, water, soil, and food. It is important that the indoor gardener acquire certain simple skills—a knowledge of methods of potting, propagation, and pruning.