Plants in Mumbai: a pot beside the Diwali sweets, then a year indoors
At Diwali, Indian companies give colleagues and partners mithai, dry fruits and hampers, and potted plants have joined that list, so plants in Mumbai can arrive at the office beside a box of sweets. Once the festival is over, the pot stays on a desk or a windowsill through a dry winter, a wet monsoon and a hot October. So the plant worth choosing is the one suited to the room, not the day. Mumbai's festival dates are kept on their own page.
An orchid that flowers for months or a cactus for an office floor
Plants in Mumbai divide into four kinds: flowering plants, mostly orchids in a pot, in a box or set beside sweets; cacti; potted plants grouped by type; and florariums, succulents under glass.
A moth orchid, the flowering plant most common in this section, keeps its blooms open for two to three months once it flowers. That suits anyone who wants colour on a desk for longer than a week. A cactus or a succulent stores its own water and asks for far less attention, which suits a floor that nobody waters on a schedule.
For an office gift at Diwali, Nariman Point, the Bandra Kurla Complex and Lower Parel are Mumbai's main business addresses, and a plant travels there as easily as a box of sweets. Chocolate Candies with Orchid pairs the two directly, and 7 Orchids in a Box sends several blooms in one container for a desk or a reception shelf.
Clear pot, silver roots: watering a moth orchid through humid months
Humidity in Mumbai peaks at 74 to 85 per cent in July and August, when the monsoon is at its height. October still runs hot, with a daytime high near 33°C, and even in January the day reaches 30.1°C, dropping to 16.4°C after dark.
The Royal Horticultural Society sets a moth orchid's comfort range at 19 to 30°C by day and 16 to 19°C by night. Mumbai's May and October days, with highs around 34°C and 33°C, sit above that upper line, while a January night falls inside it.
Direct summer sun burns the leaves, so a moth orchid belongs in a bright room rather than on an open balcony. Water it roughly once a week while it is growing, and never let the pot stand in water: tip out whatever collects in the saucer, and keep the leaves and the growing point dry. Grown in bark rather than soil, it sits in a clear pot for a reason: the owner can see whether the bark has dried out. Healthy roots show through the plastic firm and silvery-white.
Water kept in the leaves: haworthia, sedum and cacti indoors
Mumbai's dry season runs from December to February, when humidity drops to 49–62 per cent, the lowest readings of the year. The monsoon reverses that: June to September brings over 90 per cent of the city's annual rainfall, close to 2,200 millimetres measured at Colaba. A plant on a windowsill lives with whatever humidity the room itself holds, and air-conditioning dries that air further.
A succulent or a cactus is built for the dry side of that range: its leaves store water, sometimes as much as nine-tenths of the plant's weight.
A florarium keeps succulents under glass rather than in open air. The open designs, such as cube and multi-faceted shapes, suit a stone rose, sedum or haworthia, and they're watered with a spray bottle rather than a jug. Cube Florarium with Hobbit Succulent is one such piece. Stone rose here is a trade name rather than a botanical one.
Plant delivery in Mumbai: chosen by the room it will live in
A desk under an air-conditioning vent suits a succulent or a cactus: both handle dry air and need little attention. A bright room away from direct sun suits a flowering orchid instead, somewhere its blooms stay visible for weeks.
Plant delivery in Mumbai is put together to order. A florist gathers the plant for that order and photographs it before the courier leaves, and the sender can ask for a change on the strength of that photo. Most orders reach the recipient on the day they are placed.
Delivery zones across the city set out the areas covered, and how long a particular plant takes shows on its own page.
A first choice here starts with the room: a bright window favours the flowering plants section, a dry desk favours the florariums, and anyone choosing by kind rather than by light can browse plants sorted by type.