Pilea (Pilea mollis ‘Moon Valley’)

Features and Characteristics

Pilea mollis is a bushy trailing plant that features clusters of ovate, toothed, textured, dark green leaves (to 3” long) with dark bronze undertones and often light green edges. Leaf undersides are typically dark red. Tiny pink-green flowers in branched cymes in summer are not particularly showy. Indoor plants rarely flower and fruit.

Genus name comes from the Latin word pileus meaning a cap from the shape of the female flowers.

Specific epithet means soft or with soft hairs.

‘Moon Valley’ is a more upright and mounding cultivar (to 12” tall) featuring textured bronze-green leaves with sunken purple veins and bright green margins. Leaf surface is strongly puckered in a way that purportedly resembles the surface of the moon, hence the cultivar name. ‘Moon Valley’ is also commonly sold in commerce as a cultivar of Pilea involucrata, but synonymity has not been conclusively determined.