Most flowering houseplants will require some direct or filtered sunlight, care and maintenance. A Peace Lily will flower with little light but I wouldn't recommend it for a newbie. They are somewhat tempermental.
The Cast iron plant except for the flowering fits your requirements...hence the name...it tolerates neglect. It does occasionally flower.
The only one I can think of that would be pretty, no sun and no maintenance would be silk or plastic...sorry.
Depending on the plant blooms can last from 1 day to the plants lifespan...there is no set number of days. It's whatever is in their dna. It also of course depends on the care it receives. Bringing most flowering plants from a somewhat perfect growing environment to a home usually interrupts their cycle temporarily.

I find myself in agreement with goblue. Your list is comprised of plants that either do not make very good house plants, or are temporary visitors, at best. The one exception might be the begonia. But even the most tolerant of the species needs good light when grown indoors and a good eye for watering needs.

Is there anyway that we can convince you of the beauty of foliage rather than flowers? Then, you could bring in one of those short-term beauties for show....upon occasion.

You're going to want to go to a more distant store. None of those six plants are even close to matching the criteria you've listed. (The croton and cyclamen are probably closest, in that they're not completely impossible to grow as long-term indoor plants, but new growth on crotons will come in green and stay green without a pretty good amount of direct sunlight, and cyclamen have fairly specific cultural requirements and need a fair amount of maintenance.)

In fact, the plant you are looking for may well not exist; the only thing I could come up with is a peace lily. If you can figure out how they want to be watered (it's not actually hard, but people frequently make bad assumptions about what they need and how they need it, which has led to their having an undeserved reputation for being difficult), they're sturdy, they flower (not that the flowers are especially colorful or attractive), they're low-maintenance, and they don't need direct sun. But that's it.

If you're willing to drop one of the criteria and hear suggestions about plants that meet all your criteria except that they're a bit delicate, have brightly-colored foliage but no flowers, require some extra work, or need some direct sun, I'd be happy to suggest something, but those four things together add up to either a peace lily or a fake plant.

Hi Newbienew,

Welcome here..:-)

What do you mean by no "direct sunlight"..Can you provide a better description?
Are you talking no early or late afternoon sun at all? In a window with just light, like a north facing window? Or a window with the sun blocked out by curtains?

Thank you

Perhaps I've not made myself clear. I have an azalea which is doing very nicely after three weeks. I also have foliage.

I tried hyacinths, but they don't last long enough. :(

meyermike_1micha asked,

>What do you mean by no "direct sunlight". Can you provide
>a better description?
>Are you talking no early or late afternoon sun at all? In
>a window with just light, like a north facing window? Or a
>window with the sun blocked out by curtains?"

North window. Curtains not in the way.

Azaleas actually seem fairly easy indoors, although they need to be outside for part of the year if you want flowers. Mine IS dropping a lot of leaves, still, though I think that's from letting it get badly sunburnt this summer (After finding out how poisonous it was I sort of tried to kill it but then I felt bad and started taking care of it again). None of the newer growth is showing any sort of stress.

They do get leggy and they will need trimming, though. Even outside. At least, around here they do. Rhododendrons not being fully hardy to this part of Ohio might be part of that.

So, you don't actually care about keeping the plant as a long-term plant, you just want to know which flowers will last the longest before you chuck it in the trash?

mr_subjunctive said... "So, you don't actually care about keeping the plant as a long-term plant, you just want to know which flowers will last the longest before you chuck it in the trash?"

That's not what I said.

I know little about plants. As per my moniker, I`m new to this.

I have foliage. I have an azalea. I also have a truly ugly post-bloomed hyacinth which still sits on my window sill.

But I`d also like a flowering plant that lasts along the lines of azaleas and can survive on the same amount of maintenance in a north window.

...sorry if I haven't made myself clear.

Newbie, three weeks isn't a long time to call a house plant a success. Some of my plants were perfect at three weeks, and by week 4 they started to die. lol.

You've come to a great board though. You have a north window which provides indirect light. Therefore you need a plant that requires shade.

Pepperomia's are good plants for north windows.

So are Ivy's.

You need to begin with easy plants. The one's you listed are usually meant for outdoors, or are extremely hard to grow even for people with very green thumbs.

Do buy a miniature rose and put it outdoors in FULL sun, in a container when the weather warms. Provide it Rose food.

Honestly, I don't know of many "flowering" houseplants that like shade. Maybe someone here does.

What you could do is buy an African Violet already full grown and in bloom, and buy a little grow lamp for it, (a small table type lamp with a fluorescent screw in bulb,place it on a table near your window and you'll have a lot of fun growing them! There's an African Violet forum here...great folks.

Also do a Google search for "shade loving houseplants" which should list any flowering plants.

Good luck!

Okay. Well, that's what I thought you were saying initially, and that's the question gobluedjm, rhizo_1, and I answered. You just didn't like the answer.

As oakleyok said, most plants can hold themselves together for three weeks, even if they're not at all suited for long-term cultivation indoors.

There might also be some miscommunication on the meaning of "foliage" in this context: most indoor plants either have fairly plain leaves but pretty flowers, or pretty leaves and plain flowers; the latter are referred to as "foliage plants" because the leaves, not the flowers, are the point. Some foliage plants are every bit as colorful as the flowering ones, it's just that the color comes from the leaves instead of the flowers.

Plants that are grown for their flowers tend to be a lot more demanding, especially with respect to light levels, because it takes a lot of energy to build flowers. Foliage plants are sometimes just as demanding, especially if they're brightly-colored (pigments also take more energy to produce; only chlorophyll actually helps the plant collect energy) but there are a lot more choices among the foliage plants than with the bloomers.

Some of the more colorful, easier-maintenance plants I can think of that should work for a largish, unobstructed north window, but aren't likely to produce flowers there:

Aglaonema 'Brilliant' (cream, yellow, green) or 'Silver Bay,' 'Silverado,' or 'Diamond Bay' (silver, green, dark green), plus a gazillion other varieties
Chlorophytum comosum (green, and then different varieties may also be striped with white, cream or yellow)
Chlorophytum x 'Fire Flash' (orange, green)
Chamaedorea metallica (silver-gray, greenish-gray)
Dracaena deremensis 'Lemon-Lime' (green, white, chartreuse), 'Warneckei' (gray, dark green, white) or 'Limelight' (yellow, chartreuse, green)
Dracaena fragrans 'Massangeana' (yellow, green)
Dracaena marginata 'Colorama' (pink, red, green)
Epipremnum aureum (yellow, green), 'Marble Queen' (white, various shades of green), 'N'Joy' (white, green)
Haworthia attenuata (dark green, white)
Philodendron hederaceum 'Brasil' (green, yellow) or 'Lemon-Lime' (green, chartreuse, orange)
Sansevieria trifasciata 'Laurentii' (yellow, silver-green, dark green) and 'Black Gold' (very dark green, yellow)
Saxifraga stolonifera (gray, white, gray-red)
Syngonium podophyllum (assorted varieties; colors may include green, white, chartreuse, pink, red, or yellow, in various shades, combinations, and patterns)
Yucca guatemalensis (usually plain-green, but there are varieties out there with yellow margins or gray-green stripes)

How did you hook newbienew with all the links?

Great job mr_subjunctive..Thank you very much even for me, since I too have a North facing window that could use some color..Thank you

Mike..:-)

Ok..

I had to come back and say that after looking at all those pics, I have MOST of them, and never knew the name of mine..

Now I have a name with a face with many of my plants, and I could borrow one of these for a window..Thanks again!