Anthurium andraeanum
The wild ancestor of the florist's anthurium. It is a scrambling epiphyte and hemiepiphyte of wet premontane forest on the Andean slopes of southwestern Colombia and northern Ecuador, found on trunks and sometimes on the ground. It wants warm days, nights in the mid to high teens, steady humidity and filtered light, which is why the cultivated hybrids flower best in bright shade rather than deep gloom.
Where it grows wild
Grows in wet tropical forest on the Pacific-facing and inter-Andean slopes, mostly as an epiphyte or climbing hemiepiphyte on tree trunks, and sometimes terrestrially on the forest floor or on banks. The roots grow in moss and humus on bark, where they get air and frequent wetting.
The literature gives roughly 400–1200 m for wild plants, and Colombian sources extend this to about 600–2650 m. The measured wild records span 135–2900 m with a median of 1200 m.
🔒 Growing it like that
The wild conditions above, turned into targets for a shelf, a tent or a greenhouse. The full profile has:
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Profiles are drafts built from measured range and climate and from published sources; each section carries its own confidence in the app. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, used under its CC BY-SA 3.0 licence, unmodified.