Indoor jasmine, or Chinese jasmine, is a variety of jasmine plant that can be grown as a houseplant. The plant is a vining plant with green leaves and fragrant white flowers. To produce flowers, the plant needs to be kept in a cool room. Indoor jasmine also needs a lot of light and humidity to thrive.
Chinese jasmine has dark green, somewhat shiny leaves, and the flowers usually have white blooms. Before blooming, the buds of the flowers on an indoor jasmine plant are dark pink. The buds are long tubes while the flowers in bloom are star-shaped. Left unpruned, a jasmine plant can grow to 10 feet (about 3 meters) in length. Most gardeners prune the plant to keep it lush in appearance and avoid legginess.
As indoor jasmine is a vining plant, it can be trained to grow around a trellis. Training the plant keeps it neat and prevents it from overtaking a space. Some people train their plants to grow around a wire ring or other shape. It does not require much effort to train a jasmine plant.
While a gardener can keep indoor jasmine in warm temperatures during the spring and summer, in the winter it needs coolness to bloom. It should be kept in a room where the temperature is less than 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius) before it flowers, starting in the fall. If the temperature is too warm, it will not produce blooms. Typically, the plant blooms in mid-winter, around January or February.
One thing indoor jasmine is known for is the fragrance of its flowers. The scent of the flowers is very strong and becomes more intense at night. Some people find the smell of the flowers to be very calming and relaxing.
Jasmine needs plenty of sun to thrive. The light should be bright, but not direct sunlight. Setting a plant in a bright window is ideal when growing jasmine inside. As the plant does not like dry heat, the window should not be near a radiator or heating vent.
To keep the air around a jasmine plant humid enough, some gardeners set up a small humidifier next to the plant. Another solution is to set the plant's pot on top of a shallow tray filled with small pebbles. Water is poured over the pebbles. The water evaporates into the air, but is not absorbed by the soil. Although jasmine enjoys relatively humid air, it does not perform well in soggy or moist soil.