Peace lily flowers are often bright white when you bring them home from a store or nursery. It’s understandably concerning if they suddenly start turning green. Luckily, this is a common phenomenon and is easy to fix.
Here are the three main reasons why this common phenomenon happens your peace lily flowers may be green and what you can do about it.
The Flowers Are Getting Old
Many peace lily species have flowers that change from white to green as they age. The reason for this is that chlorophyll increases, causing the plant’s blooms to take on a more green hue.
Unlike most flowers, peace lily “flowers” are spathes, a type of modified leaf. So, like other leaves, spathes are capable of photosynthesis and producing chlorophyll.
If your peace lily flowers are turning green because of old age, there’s nothing you can do but let nature take its course. In the future, it’s helpful to purchase a young peace lily plant with spathes that are just starting to emerge. That way, you’ll be able to enjoy white flowers for as long as possible.
You should aim to provide your new peace lily plant with ideal growing conditions. That includes watering them so that their soil stays moist, offering them good drainage, and keeping them in room temperature conditions.
Too Much Fertilizer
There’s a fine line between giving your peace lily enough fertilizer to keep it healthy and fertilizing it so much that it sparks the extra production of chlorophyll.
Not all fertilizers have the same effect on peace lily flowers. Those with lots of iron and nitrogen are the biggest culprits. If you avoid fertilizers rich in these elements and don’t overfertilize, your peace lilies will stay white.
We recommend fertilizing your peace lily flower two or three times per year at most. The reality is that your plant will thrive if you simply add some organic compost to its soil. Compost will allow the plant to enjoy a slow release of nutrients, and you’ll get to enjoy flowers that stay white for longer.
Wrong Amount of Sunlight
Balancing the amount of sunlight your peace lily should get is tricky—both too much and too little sunlight will cause the flowers to turn green.
Peace lilies are a plant that seeks partial to full shade in the wild. If you put them in a spot with lots of sunlight, they might go into photosynthesis overdrive, producing extra chlorophyll. In contrast, if they’re in a spot without any access to sunlight, their spades will also turn green as they take on the role of true leaves in producing extra chlorophyll to keep the plant alive.
You’ll need to determine if you think your peace lily flowers could be turning green from too much or too little sunlight. Placing your plant in an area with indirect sunlight is typically the best way to keep its flowers white for as long as possible.
What Happens If You Cut Green Peace Lily Flowers?
In many cases, cutting green peace lily flowers can give the plant more nutrition, which provides extra energy for creating new blossoms. Should you choose to cut your green flowers, you can do so at the base of the plant using sterile pruners.
Other people don’t mind the change of flower color and like to leave the green flowers intact. That’s a matter of personal preference. Regardless of whether you cut your green peace lily flowers, making environmental adjustments to keep your plant as healthy as possible is ideal, both for aesthetics and your plant’s lifespan.
Green Lilies
Environmental causes aren’t the only reason that peace lily flowers turn green. Instead, some peace lily species naturally grow green spathes, particularly along their veins. In that case, there’s nothing you can do other than embrace your peace lily’s individuality.
Final Thoughts
If your peace lily flowers have a green hue instead of the white you expect, there could be a variety of things that are causing the problem. With a few environmental changes, you can often bring back the white blossoms you’re so fond of. Many of these problems will also cause a peace lily’s leaves to turn yellow.