They Grow Up So Fast, Part 5

Another one of these, motivated mostly by the fact that I just took a round of new pictures a week and a half ago and clearly had to do something with them.

Unidentified fern
This was a "bonus plant." It came along with the Rhipsalis NOID, way back in March 2011. I didn't expect it to survive, but I was curious about what it was, and I figured it was worth a shot, so I removed it as carefully as I could from the pot and put it in its own 4-inch (10 cm) pot, with a clear plastic drinking glass over it to keep the humidity high while it recovered. For a while at the beginning, I thought it might be a Microsorum diversifolium, but I'm thinking now it's probably a Phlebodium aureum, or something very similar. Which is kind of nice for me, since the big huge Phlebodium aureum 'Mandianum' got thrown out in the scalepocalypse and I didn't have a back-up.

August 2011. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
October 2011. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
September 2012. Pot: 6 inches (15 cm).
March 2013. Pot: 8 inches (20 cm).

Agave desmettiana?
Another one that's changed size pretty dramatically, though in this case it took quite a bit longer. It would probably have gone a lot faster if I'd been letting it spend every summer outside, instead of just 2012.

I can't say enough nice things about Agave as a genus. They're among the least fussy plants I've grown, they get gratifyingly big, they're easy to propagate (once they decide to start offsetting), and they're neat-looking. I mean, sure, you do have to be willing to get stabbed in the face from time to time. But everything else about them is awesome.

January 2008. Pot: 3 inches (8 cm) along the diagonal.

November 2009. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm)?

August 2010. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm)?

July 2011. Pot: 6 inches (15 cm)?
March 2013. Pot: 8 or 9 inches (20-23 cm).


Epipremnum aureum 'Neon'
I'd had bad experiences with 'Neon' in the past; one 4-inch (10 cm) plant did okay for me until I tried to move it up to a 6-inch (15 cm) pot, and then it suddenly rotted and died. I couldn't even salvage any cuttings: they were somehow already rotten by the time I took them, even though they looked perfectly healthy.

However, I couldn't resist trying again last summer. It turns out that it's a much more forgiving plant if you give it things like light and fertilizer;¹ there's only nine months' difference between the two pictures below.

June 2012. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
March 2013. Pot: 6 inches (15 cm).

Anthurium schlechtendahlii
I've covered Anthurium schhlechtendahlii previously, but thought it was worth showing you again, considering how much it's grown in the last year and a half.

I'd been worried that this was going to be another situation like Anthurium "hookeri,"² where I wouldn't be able to provide it with enough light, so it'd get huge, weird leaves and never look quite right. But so far, it's been pretty happy with artificial light and regular room conditions. The husband's office tends to run colder than the rest of the house,³ even, but that hasn't seemed to be a problem. It's getting close to outgrowing its spot, and I'm not sure I have anywhere to move it when it does, but it surely has to count as a success to have gone from seedlings to monster in just under three years.


August 2010. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).

February 2011. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).

July 2011. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
March 2013. Pot: 8 inches (20 cm).

Unidentified Ficus benjamina cv.
This one started out as perlite-rooted cuttings from the ex-job, and I didn't give it decent light until very recently, because there's only so much light to go around and it didn't seem to urgently need a lot. But once I gave it one of the highly-coveted south window spots, it's filled out like crazy, much better than some of the other Ficuses I've started from cuttings. (How many times do I need to learn that even plants which tolerate lower levels of light might still prefer more light? I don't know. At least twice, apparently.)

Ficus benjamina is another one that I'm appreciating a lot more in the last year or so than I did before that. Sometimes the boring plants you see everywhere are everywhere for good reasons.


January 2008. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).

October 2011. Pot: 6 inches (15 cm).
March 2013. Pot: 8 inches (20 cm).
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¹ (who knew?)
² (Sold to me as A. hookeri, but I understand it's pretty unlikely to be A. hookeri, hence the quote marks.)
³ We chose wrong when we were picking out rooms for ourselves. I'm always too hot, but I picked the hottest room; he's always too cold, and picked the coldest. In our defense, we didn't know any of this at the time we were doing the picking. We've both made enough changes to the rooms that it would be difficult to switch back.