These beautiful houseplants with unique leaves will breathe life into your collection without involving a lot of effort!
While nothing beats the liveliness of lush green foliage, these houseplants with unique leaves bring that extraordinary charm you’d love to grace the corners of your home with!
Houseplants with Unique Leaves
1. Mrs. Cox Pelargonium
Botanical Name: Pelargonium domesticum ‘Mrs. Cox’
Originated in 1879, this hybrid geranium has one of the fanciest leaves! This multicolored variety looks more like a flower with streaks of yellows and green, orange, red, and maroon, too! To complement the handsome foliage, this plant also produces salmon-colored blooms during the spring and summer.
2. Alocasia Cuprea
Botanical Name: Alocasia cuprea
The extraordinary leaves showcase a beautiful metallic sheen that looks coppery or even bronze from certain angles—a mix of pink and green shades with plum undersides. Besides, the leaves have a wavy texture that reflects the light even better!
3. Leopard Plant
Botanical Name: Farfugium japonicum var. giganteum
The most ornamental quality of this plant is, of course, its large foliage with yellow spots against a dark green background. Apart from their variegation, their huge size (12 inches or more in width) forms the basal clump of the plant, growing to about 2 inches in height.
4. Moon Valley Friendship Plant
Botanical Name: Pilea involucrata ‘Moon Valley’
The Moon Valley Friendship plant has a mouthful of a name, but it packs a punch in its appearance, too! This Pilea variety showcases puckered leaf surfaces that resemble that of a waffle, with bronze-green coloration complete with sunken purple veins and creamy-white flowers when grown in bright light, setting the standards for eye-catching foliage.
Plus, it boasts strong spiritual significance, too.
5. Asparagus Fern
Botanical Name: Asparagus densiflorus
Though several plants go by the common name of Asparagus fern, the one we are talking about here is the ‘Sprengeri,’ which is actually not a fern at all! This unique houseplant showcases not leaves but arching stems covered with flat leaves, which give this plant a “fuzzy” or “frothy” appearance from afar.
6. Fiber-Optic Grass
Botanical Name: Isolepis cernua
Are you someone who tends to live in extremes and either overwaters or underwaters plants? Well, then, the fiber-optic grass would be the perfect houseplant for you. This plant with fun foliage showcases threadlike-grass leaves that resemble fiber-optic wire. The fun fact is that you can also grow this plant in standing water and create your own shallow-water garden!
7. Living Stones
Botanical Name: Lithops karasmontana spp. bella
Plants that look like stones? Well, that sounds like one houseplant with positively unique leaves! Named appropriately as pebble plants, this plant, with a stone-like appearance, even produces flowers. The best part about these stone-like flowering plants is that they need little to no water!
8. String of Dolphins
Botanical Name: Curio × peregrinus
True to its name, this succulent is like an ode to unique foliage thanks to its tiny leaves that resemble pods of swimming dolphins. Keep this plant in a spot where it gets medium, indirect sunlight, like the eastern or western windows, and watch it flourish, being a focal point!
9. Hoya Kerii
Botanical Name: Hoya kerii
Commonly known as the sweetheart plant, the Hoya kerrii is truly one of the most romantic succulents out there. Why? Well, it is quite popular as a Valentine’s Day gift, as each leaf is shaped like a heart. Because of this unique-shaped foliage, you can often find individual clipping of its leaves being sold as well.
10. Fishbone Cactus
Botanical Name: Epiphyllum anguliger
On the one hand, the fishbone cactus’s appearance might seem whacky, but it makes for quite a wonderful-looking focal point with its long stems showcasing zig-zag leaves in a light green coloration. This low-maintenance plant is named so because these leaves that resemble fishbone and look exquisite trailing from a hanging container.
11. Mountain Rose
Botanical Name: Greenovia dodrantalis
Yet another plant on this list that lives up to its name, the Greenovia, showcases pink or green foliage, depending on the variety, that looks exactly like roses. These grow up to about a height of 6 inches and are quite low-maintenance, thus excellent for busy plant lovers.
12. Rex Begonia
Botanical Name: Begonia rex-cultorum
The foliage is legit dramatic, thanks to the range of color variegation like silver, pink, and purple, and the artistic pattern on the leaves (close competition to Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”!). With these intricate painted patterns on the leaves, the foliage can add a unique aesthetic wherever you choose to display it.
13. Bunny’s Ears
Botanical Name: Monilaria obconica
Love furry little pets? Though your busy schedule may not allow you to have them, you could compromise and get these adorable bunny succulents called so because of their tiny sizes and shapes resembling bunny ears. These “ears” actually grow longer as the plant matures, but the size of the base stays the same.
14. Cooper’s Haworthia
Botanical Name: Haworthia Cooperi Var. Truncata
Also known as Pussy Foot or Window Haworthia, the Cooper’s Haworthia positively looks like a succulent with bubbles settled over it. These “bubbles” are actually clumps of numerous small rosettes made of fleshy green leaves, and this appearance is what makes this houseplant so unique.
15. Candelabra Plant
Botanical Name: Euphorbia lactea cristata
This compact, evergreen succulent with a shrubby growth habit stands out with its ridged, undulating, reddish-green spiny stems. The stems are angled and feature black-paired stem thorns, giving the plant the appearance of an elkhorn coral, which is also one of its nicknames.
16. Peacock Plant
Botanical Name: Calathea makoyana
Yet another plant on this list with quite dramatic foliage is rightly called the peacock plant because of its patterned leaves, highlighted with silver and green markings on the upper surfaces and splotches of reddish-purple on the underside. It is truly a beauty to behold from every angle!
17. Venus Flytrap
Botanical Name: Dionaea muscipula
While you must be quite familiar with this plant’s bristly insect-eating leaves that fold into two hinged lobes, each with thorny edges, you may never have thought it could be medically beneficial.
18. Butterfly Wing
Botanical Name: Christia obcordata
This variety looks so exotic you would think it’s from another world! It showcases bright green leaves splotched with red dots, running horizontally along the foliage. Also, it blooms small cream flowers in late summer, adding to its uniqueness.
19. Jellyfish Air Plant
Botanical Name: Tillandsia caput medusae
Like the Greek Goddess Medusa, this Tillandsia variety is a force to be reckoned with! Showcasing long, spindly, thick leaves like the snakes on the Goddess’s head, these leaves appear to float in mid-air when you suspend them upside down. Each leaf is covered with fine, grey hairs, giving the foliage a fuzzy texture.
20. Heartleaf Fern
Botanical Name: Hemionitis arifolia
If we were to describe this fern, we would say it has a heart of gold. Confused? Well, the young lime green leaves grow into heart-shaped foliage featuring a deep emerald color, making it quite the showstopper. They unfurl from black, stringy, hairy stems in a fern-like fashion and, thus, give the plant its name.
21. Wine Cup
Botanical Name: Callirhoe involucrata
Succulents always surprise us, and the Wine Cup is one such example! It features round bright green leaves with raised coiled edges, which look quite like a wine cup, especially when combined with the fact that it has unbranched stems.
22. Trachyandra
Botanical Name: Trachyandra tortilis
A rare indoor succulent, the Trachyandra is sought after for its unique leaves, which coil up in a spiral, making it a strong contender for this list. Plus, it reaches only upto 10 inches in height, ideal for work desks and coffee tables.
23. Corkscrew Rush
Botanical Name: Juncus effusus ‘Spiralis’
This is truly one houseplant that can turn heads with its spindly unbridled leaves, whose round blades twist gently starting from the base all the way to the top end of the foliage, emerging from clusters of stems.
24. Pangolin
Botanical Name: Crassula ‘Pangolin’
Standing by its name, this slow-growing succulent has quite a distinctive appearance, with its foliage resembling the scales of the animal called a ‘pangolin.’ The robust, overlapping scales formed by the packed, felted silvery leaves set this succulent apart, and hence a spot on this list!
