Sonerila Glowing Lines: is it worth €65?
The tiny melastomes with iridescent veins are winning over terrarium keepers. They are expensive and they are delicate. An honest look at when they are worth it.
In two years the iridescent-veined Sonerila have become the object of desire among terrarium keepers, and the prices say so: a small plant runs between fifty and eighty euros, and the rarer forms pass a hundred. The question is whether it makes sense.
Let me answer first and explain after: it makes sense if you already have a terrarium that works. It makes no sense at all as a first plant.
What they are
Sonerila are small melastomes from the Asian tropical understorey. The leaves have a surface micro-structure that diffracts light, which is why the veins look lit from within: the colour changes with the angle you look from. It is not pigment, it is optics. It is also why they always photograph worse than they look in the flesh.
Why they cost what they cost
Three concrete reasons. They grow slowly, so a grower has a plant tied up for months before a cutting can be sold. They propagate with low take rates compared to a Begonia or a Philodendron. And they do not travel well: whoever sells them prices in the ones lost on the way.
What it actually takes to keep them
Humidity steady above 75 per cent, so a closed terrarium or a cabinet: in an open room they do not survive, and that is not a question of skill. Temperature between 20 and 26 degrees, without swings. Indirect light but not little: in the dark the iridescence disappears and the plant stretches. A very retentive substrate, the 50/30/10/10 mix I wrote about in the piece on substrates. And above all air that barely moves, because high humidity without exchange means mould within a week.
When it is worth it. If you already have a terrarium with a humidifier or mister that has been running for some months and you know the readings hold, then yes: it is a plant that repays you, because it takes up almost no room and gives an effect no other plant does. Three or four specimens fit in a thirty-centimetre container and it looks like another planet.
When it is not worth it. If you are buying the terrarium and the Sonerila together, you are running two experiments at once: when something goes wrong you will not know whether to blame the environment or the plant. Better to run the terrarium for two months with something more forgiving, a Fittonia or a terrarium Peperomia for instance, and put the Sonerila in when you know the numbers hold still.
And if budget is the constraint: for sixty-five euros you can also buy three or four more generous plants that teach you more. The learning is worth more than the one beautiful plant.
My position as a seller, said plainly: I would rather not sell it to you now and sell it to you in three months than sell it today and watch it die. A dead plant at sixty-five euros is not a customer, it is a customer lost.