If you want an easy houseplant that produces plenty of pretty flowers and lots of drama, oxalis, commonly called shamrock plant, should be on your list. Oxalis in any color can't wait to start blooming in late winter. Purple shamrocks have pinkish flowers, with white flowers more common on green shamrocks. Happy plants will bloom intermittently year round.

That is, unless you forget to water a plant and it collapses and then shrivels up. This is the drama part. You think your purple shamrock is dead, so you stash it in an out-of-the way place, maybe on its way to the trash can, and forget about it. Then fate intervenes, somehow fills the container with moisture, and your lost darlings arise from the dead!

They were merely resting on their pips, you see.

Native to South America and Africa (there are several species), oxalis plants seem to relish a period of dormancy of at least 4 to 6 weeks, whether intentional or accidental. A good parch will send them into a resting mode, as will shearing back all the leaves.  I once did this as a spider mite intervention. After the plants enjoyed a dry rest, and the new leaves came on totally clean.

Sharing Shamrocks

I like to repot crowded plants in late winter -- prime sharing season for shamrocks. Even if all the leaves disappear from a pip that is actively growing, new ones will emerge within days. I have even seen oxalis roots sold in little bags, so they are pretty darn tough.

I use extra purple oxalis as accent plants in summer deck containers, and sometimes as summer groundcover plants in flowerbeds. The plants don’t survive winter in Zone 6, but  in warmer climes oxalis can quickly become a weed. Purple oxalis as well as red-and-green iron cross strains are hardy only to Zone 7, but several species can survive much colder winters.  Species that do not make tubers (for example, O. vulcanicola) are especially bad about throwing seeds where they are not wanted.