Product Review: Ultimate Plant Cage, Ultimate Plant Clips, Ultimate Plant Stakes

DISCLOSURE: I was provided with the following products for review:
• Ultimate Plant Cage
• Ultimate Plant Clips
• Ultimate Plant Stakes
No other compensation was given. My understanding was that I was to provide a review of the stakes whether I liked them or not, but that I didn't necessarily have to acknowledge the clips and cage, which were sent along with the stakes. Though I'm acknowledging them anyway, because why the hell not.

The first thing to note is that the company that sells these products, Global Garden Friends, was unusually pleasant to communicate with, both when we were first discussing whether or not I would review their products, and later on when I had questions about the products while trying to draft the review. And that even remained the case when I delayed the review over and over for various reasons. This is probably not the sort of thing that's going to matter to you much as a consumer, but it was so novel to have a company treat me somewhat like a person that it seemed worth bringing up.

So here are my experiences with the three products I tried:


Ultimate Plant Cage

The cage didn't work particularly well for me, for reasons that I think are not the fault of the product. I only had one plant that I needed caged, a Monstera deliciosa, and it was already well-established, large, heavy, and contorted. (The reason I needed a cage was because it had gotten so large that it was no longer possible to do much of anything with it, including moving it to the tub to water, so sprawly and awkward it had become.) This is how it's supposed to work:


Which seems nice and straightforward, but I couldn't even get the base assembled around the bottom of the plant, because of the tangle of stems and aerial roots and so forth. The pot was not much larger than the ring in the first place, so I was trying to gather up the stems in the middle and build the ring around them, but when I finished building the ring and released the plant to move on to the next stage of the assembly process, the weight of the stems pulled the ring apart. This happened over and over until I gave up.

So I don't feel like I can fairly evaluate the cage. This isn't the cage's fault; it's the plant's fault, for being so heavy, and having already grown without a support for so long. I will likely have to restart the Monstera in question from cuttings soon, so if/when this happens, I'll start it in the cage and see how much better that works. So there may be a follow-up review at some point in the next year.


Ultimate Plant Clips

I had some troubles with these too, some of them the fault of the product and some not. There is an upper limit to how large of a stem they'll hold. If you attempt something bigger in diameter than that,¹ the clips won't close around the stem. Or they'll close but then pop back open after a couple seconds. Aside from the size limitations, they work fine, and as the website notes, they can be attached one-handed, while you use your other hand to hold things in the right position or whatever.

I still wouldn't buy these myself, mostly because of the cost. You can get 20 clips for $5, which doesn't sound bad, but I can get a whole skein of acrylic yarn for $3, which is enough to tie stems to objects all day long and still have enough yarn left over to knit six pairs of baby booties. There's nothing wrong with the clips, and if you like the look of them better than yarn then hey, go for it, but the product is solving problems that I don't actually have.


Ultimate Plant Stakes

On the other hand: stakes. I have problems with plants leaning. Sometimes that's because plants aren't growing that well, leading to weak stems, phototropism, and the like. Sometimes it's because they're growing too well, and a small, weak base is trying to support a large, heavy top. Some plants just want to lean over after they grow for a while, even if everything's perfect. So stakes are a thing that I sometimes need and use, and I've tried a lot of different things.

With that said, the bar is set pretty low on what an object needs to do in order to function as a plant stake. Mostly it just needs to be capable of verticality and strong enough not to bend under the weight of the plant. So how impressive is it, really, if a product can stand upright without bending? Not very. And yet, some things I've tried in the past haven't been up to the challenge.

Wood core with coconut fiber (?) wrapped around it, for plants that climb: basically worthless. Maybe worse than worthless.²
Wooden dowels: good, even if they do eventually rot.
Acrylic rods collected from the garbage of a former employer: never quite big and sturdy enough to support anything that actually needed support.³ A thicker-diameter rod would probably have worked fine, but I'd guess it would be unnecessarily expensive. Plus acrylic scratches really easily, so it wouldn't look transparent and shiny for very long.
Bamboo: depends on the diameter. Thick ones work well, thin ones don't.⁴ The thin greenish-blue dyed ones are awful and I have no idea how the companies producing and selling them stay in business.
Thin metal rod of unknown origin which is also somehow green: better than nothing, but too short for most of the plants that need support.

Wood dowels and (thick) bamboo are perfectly fine, and sometimes even blend in with the real stem, for woody plants like Coffea or Murraya. Wood and bamboo eventually rot, though usually by the time that happens, either the plant has become self-supporting and it doesn't matter that the stake has rotted, or it's time to move the plant to a bigger pot anyway, so you may as well change the stake too. That said, wooden dowels are pretty expensive to be using as stakes, and either you have to choose one that's really tall and let the plant catch up, or choose one that's the same height as the plant and let the plant overrun it. This is not, like, Hitler bad, or even root mealybug bad, but I've usually chosen the first option and then silently resented the bare top of the stake until the plant caught up or the stake needed replacing. So my favorite part about the Ultimate Plant Stakes is how easily their height can be adjusted.

The Ultimate Plant Stakes improve on other things I've tried in other ways: you should only have to buy them once, unlike wood or bamboo, they don't break or bend, and the price is in the same ballpark as comparable products like bamboo stakes and wood dowels, so I feel comfortable endorsing the product. They definitely work well for my Dracaena 'Limelight,'

The angle hides the lowest 3/4 of each stake somewhat, but they're there.

and although they don't get the Asplundia 'Jungle Drum' completely vertical, they're more effective than anything else I've tried.⁵

A single stake, as packaged, is only useful for plants with stems from about 12 to 48 inches (30-122 cm) tall. Shorter than 12 inches and the stakes are overkill; taller than 48 inches and the top of the plant remains free to flop about. The stakes come in packages of six, though, and it's possible to use more than one stake at a time to get something taller than that. Each stake consists of an outer tube, an inner stake, and a white plastic cap. If you remove the cap and stagger the outer tubes and inner stakes, you can go higher than that. I don't know how much higher you can usefully go, but I managed to stake the length of my 60-inch (152 cm) tall Ficus lyrata by using three stakes together, so the useful range is at least 60 inches.⁶

The stake is mostly not visible here either, but you can see the bottom fifth of it to the right of the stems.
So to summarize:

Ultimate Plant Cage: testing incomplete, due to lack of fair test cases.
Ultimate Plant Clips: I don't object to them, but I don't really see the point.
Ultimate Plant Stakes: endorsed, and even kind of enthusiastic about, for plants within the useful height range.

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¹ The company's site says the clips will hold stems up to 1/2 inch in diameter, but I found the effective maximum stem diameter was a little bigger than that, about 3/4 inch (1.9 cm), when used along with the Ultimate Plant Stakes. This is large enough for most vining plants (though, again, if your problem is a Monstera then you're out of luck), but may or may not be adequate for upright woody plants like Dracaena, Yucca, older Ficuses, Asplundia, Dieffenbachia, etc. So measure the diameter of the stems first.
I tried, just for shiggles, to see whether it was possible to link multiple clips together to make a multi-clip with a larger diameter, but that didn't work.
It's probably worth pointing out that this is a good thing in some respects -- you don't have to worry about the clip strangling a stem as it grows, because the clip will pop open once the stem gets big enough to pop it. I don't know how often that problem actually arises, but I'm willing to accept this as a good quality for plant clips to have because the website says it is.
² I've used those before with Monstera deliciosa, and I think maybe also Syngonium podophyllum. Coir doesn't actually hold water for shit when it's in a thin layer around a wood core, so the roots don't anchor themselves in it, and the stakes I've used had short, wide bases and were easily pulled over when I tied the plant to them. So I'm not a fan. I've seen similar stakes that had sort of a plastic mesh over a layer of sphagnum, with a solid (wood? plastic?) core at the center of that: it seems like those might be more effective for clinging aerial roots to use as support, but I've never actually tried one. And they seemed to have the same problem with bases. Nothing is going to hold up a heavy vining plant unless you can anchor it solidly in the soil.
³ They make very good dibblers, though. And I do a lot of dibbling, so it was worth keeping them.
⁴ It should probably also be noted that I have never experienced, or heard of anyone experiencing, bamboo stakes on a plant kept indoors leading to "hives" of insects of any kind, nor any insects at all, as the ad copy on the Ultimate Plant Stakes suggests.
⁵ The Asplundia is sort of an impossible case all around -- the part of the stem at the soil line is fairly narrow and weak, so the plant is both top-heavy and unstable. It's also difficult to get stakes very close to the stem, because the leaves are so broad and numerous that it's impossible to place a stake anywhere without it poking through a leaf. It still has a slight lean, and required two of the Ultimate Plant Stakes to get that far, but this is the most verticality it's managed in years.

⁶ Though it should probably be noted that stakes which are extended in this way don't stand up well in 16 mph (kph) winds with gusts of 25 mph (kph), as I discovered while trying to get a photo of the Ficus lyrata for this post. This is probably not relevant to you, since you probably don't have 16 mph winds in your home (or if you do, you probably have bigger worries than keeping your houseplants upright), but it may be relevant if you're trying to stake something outdoors.

[Exceptionally] Pretty pictures: transmitted light -- Part XLII

I'm going to be working on Berry Go Round #41 this week (hoping to have it up on Wednesday, but no promises), so it's transmitted-light time again.

(The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)

Hosta NOID.

Tradescantia pallida.

Cissus rhombifolia. Something about the slight variations in color here makes me really happy. The plant itself mostly makes me angry, unfortunately -- I had one a few years ago that did reasonably well for a year or two, but then it slowly dwindled to nothing for no discernable reason. I've bought replacements for it, but they tend to begin dwindling immediately. Sometimes I also had mildew problems. Yes, I have fairly good humidity here in the house, but it's not so good that I should be seeing mildew. So Cissus rhombifolia is on the Never Again list.

Episcia NOID. Episcias don't tend to give particularly good transmitted light photos, despite the often-colorful leaves. Gesneriads in general tend not to turn out well, actually. I think the leaves are too thick for it to work properly.

Acer sp., autumn.

Aglaonema 'Jubilee.' Especially perceptive readers might notice that this is the same image as the one I'm using for the header for the next several weeks; that was accidental, and if I'd noticed it was part of the next set of transmitted light pictures, I would have picked something else. Oh well.

Prunus sp., autumn.

Asplundia 'Jungle Drum.'

Euonymous alatus, autumn. This is probably my favorite from this set, though I'm a little hazy as to why. Makes me think of lightning, a little.

Ipomoea NOID, petals. It's hard to find opportunities for blue transmitted light pictures. I think this one turned out nicely.

Newish plants

This batch isn't very interesting until you get to the last one, and the last one isn't as interesting as it could be, in the context of yesterday's post, but, you know, they can't all be exciting plants you've never seen before.

Alpinia zerumbet variegata. Lowe's, Coralville, $3.25.
I have such mixed feelings about Lowe's. I wish they didn't have to mistreat the plants so badly, but if I'm honest, that's the main reason I still check to see what they have: I get curious about whether they have anything interesting marked down because it's on the brink of death.

I got a division of this variety of Alpinia from a reader last summer, and potted it up, and it did so well that I decided it would be worth it to try to revive this one. Ominously, when I asked about the price (it wasn't marked, but was on the distressed rack, so I figured it was discounted: I just didn't know how what the new price was), the employee asked, "gonna nurse it back to health, are you?" and laughed. I'm not sure if the idea amused him because he assumed I wouldn't know what I was doing and was therefore throwing my money away, or because he knew that it didn't matter whether I knew what I was doing because the plant was already so thoroughly destroyed that there was no bringing it back possible, or if he's just the kind of person who thinks everything sounds friendlier and more customer-servicey if accompanied by a laugh ('Twas the season to be jolly, after all), but in any case I was kind of disturbed by the reaction.

Since the photo was taken, mostly I've just cut off more leaves, but there are a few new ones opening. I should probably try to find a better spot for it, too: right now it's sort of in the path of a heater, which is likely not helping.

Asplundia 'Jungle Drum.' Lowe's, Coralville, $0.75.
Same thing, though in this particular case they had about seven or eight of these discounted, and this was the only one that looked like it was going to survive. The others were all soaking wet, standing in about an inch of water, and the emerging leaves were black. If only I'd gotten there sooner.

Not that I need more Asplundias: I just like them, and they're still rare enough around here that I feel sort of obliged to pick one up if I see one. Particularly when they're only $0.75.

Euphorbia ingens? Lowe's, Coralville, $9.
Yet another Lowe's rescue. They had bigger specimens of this same plant for $27, which I declined to buy the last time I was there because it looked like they'd gotten pretty beat-up in transit, but I have wanted one of these (whatever it is) for a while, so now I have one.

Dizygotheca elegantissima 'Olympia.' Lowe's, Coralville, $2.68.
This wasn't a rescue: I actually paid full price for this. Dizygotheca elegantissimas still make me nervous, even though I've had one at home for three and a half years now. It's been fine (though it did drop a ring of leaves from the very top of the plant recently, which was odd), so I'm pretty sure I can do this, but even so.

'Olympia' is the name Exotic Angel gives this variety: it's basically the same as the species, but the leaves are shorter and stubbier. I don't know that I like it, but it was different, the plants looked like they'd just come in, and it was under $3, so I'll gamble.

Saintpaulia NOID. Ace Hardware, Iowa City, $5.
More bravery. The 'Shimmer Shake' I bought in Cedar Rapids a month ago (see previous new plants post) is flowering abundantly now,¹ and the one I've had for years, the only survivor of the 2009 mass death, has been doing well and flowering continuously for over a year now,² so I figured I'd push my luck a bit further. I don't know what flower colors to expect here; it didn't have any when I bought it, and hasn't produced any flowers since, but it's only been three weeks or so.

Schlumbergera NOID. Lowe's, Coralville, $2.50.

Schlumbergera NOID. Lowe's, Coralville, $5.50.
Well I said I was going to grab some Schlumbergeras when they started marking them down. I was hoping to wait until they were cheaper than this (last year I saw several for $1, so I assume the same happened / is happening this year), but there were almost none available that weren't 'Caribbean Dancer' or something that looks like 'Caribbean Dancer,' so I panicked and bought early. The pink/magenta one is a 4" (10 cm) pot, and the white is a 6" (15 cm) pot.

Sophrolaeliocattleya Hazel Boyd 'Debbie.' Orchids and Moore, Iowa City, $22.44.
Orchids and Moore is a one-woman operation at the Sycamore Mall in Iowa City. Jacklyn Moore has been selling orchids there for about nine years there, but the hours are weird because it's a side job, so a lot of the time when I think about going, she's not there. I don't actually get into town that much, and to the Sycamore Mall even less, so I think I've only actually looked at what she's got twice.

Both times, I really wanted a Masdevallia, O&M being the only place I've seen them for sale,³ and both times I talked myself out of it because I knew if I bought one I'd be dooming it to death by underwatering.

The first time I looked at what she had (a long time ago -- I was still working in the garden center then), I didn't wind up buying anything, but this time, I have a few years of keeping a Brassolaeliocattleya alive under my belt,⁴ and I'd just bought the two Potinaras, so I was feeling more adventurous. It took a long time to rule out the Masdevallia, and then there was a scented Epidendrum or Epicattleya (some kind of Epi-something or another, anyway) that I thought about for a long time, but then at the end I grabbed this Slc., which I hadn't been considering particularly, or even thinking much about, because apparently my subconscious was working out the decision while I was dithering about the Epiwhatever.


It's a ridiculously difficult flower to photograph, because the color varies a lot depending on the lighting. Sometimes it's a bright orange-red, sometimes a satiny pink-red as in the picture, occasionally it's a deep wine-red. And then the camera sometimes makes colors up besides, so I wouldn't say the above is a particularly good representation of the flower, but it's the best I'm going to be able to do.

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¹ Though, disappointingly, the color is not what I thought I was going to get: the spent flowers that were still attached to the plant looked like they were light pink or lavender with dark blue-violet flecks, like a variety I used to have, so I bought it because of that, and instead I've got a plant with monstrous, huge, ruffly, doubled things that are a solid color somewhere between blue-violet and lavender. No flecks at all. For the moment, it's flowering so robustly that I don't mind that much, but even so: not the variety I thought I was buying, and I'm puzzled as to how I could have been that far off.
² (Though it needs to be root-pruned and re-potted.)
³ It's possible that someone was selling them at the orchid show at Wallace's Garden Center last March, but A) if anybody was, I don't remember seeing it, and B) it wouldn't have mattered, because I have a very clear and distinct memory of not having enough money to be buying orchids at the time, so I actually sort of tried not to look too closely at the stuff that was for sale.
⁴ And not just alive, but getting bigger and stuff too. I knew when I bought it that it wasn't of flowering size yet, but figured that was the only way I could afford to try one out. It still hasn't flowered, but there are some interesting, tiny buds as of the last couple weeks, which are either leaves or flowers. Since I've never even seen the flowers, except in photos online, this would be very exciting news, if they turned out to be flower buds, but I think they're probably actually just leaves. But leaves would be sort of exciting too. I'm just tickled that it's not dead, really.

[Exceptionally] Pretty pictures: transmitted light -- Part XXX

There have been better sets of transmitted light photos, but maybe I can make up for this with my theory about why I like the transmitted light photos.

Some of it is just that there are pretty colors, and I like pretty colors. In fact, that's probably the main appeal, but it doesn't explain why leaves. The world is full of pretty-colored things I could take pictures of. Candy wrappers, yogurt-cup lids, my collection of superballs --


and so on. It's not even strictly a botanical thing, the transmitted light photography, because I could just take pictures of flowers all the time, if I were looking for brightly-colored, botanically-relevant pictures. So there's something specific to the veins.

And I think the explanation is that I see the leaf pictures as street maps. I wind up looking at real street maps quite a bit anyway, but also I used to play a lot of Sim City, particularly the last one, SC4, when I find myself without internet access, or when I'm merely extremely bored and can't work on the blog. I'm pretty sure I did everything I could possibly do with the game a long time ago, but I still like fiddling with it.

The point is that leaf-venation is a transportation network, and transportation networks fascinate me. And different leaves are reminiscent of different kinds of street plans. London (or at least parts of London) has weird, curvy, organic street networks. Washington DC streets are usually straight, but go in every crazy direction. Council Bluffs, IA has incredibly boring, straight, evenly-spaced streets in a perfect grid. Murphy, TX (suburban Dallas) has a more or less regular grid of main streets, but each square in the grid contains all kinds of curved, inefficient streets that frequently subdivide into cul-de-sacs. And I see similar patterns in the leaves. Most leaves fall into the Murphy pattern, but pretty much the whole Maranta family have Council Bluffs veins. Ferns tend to be London-like.

Something to think about, maybe, if you want, as we peruse this thirtieth batch of photos. In a lot of cases, of course, the venation won't be clear from the small versions of the pictures, but you can see them enlarged by clicking on them or opening them in a separate window. Not every leaf necessarily falls into one of the above models, which were only ever supposed to be broad descriptions in the first place, but I've opined below about which plants fit which maps. There are probably better city choices to be made, too, cities with street plans that are more exaggerated versions of the above (though Council Bluffs is pretty extreme already). Feel free to go to Google Maps if you like. (I would have included Google Maps maps in the post, but as I understand the Terms of Service, I'm not allowed to.) There are also some actual landscape shots at boston.com that are interesting, if thought of as leaf-veins, from in and near Fort Myers, Florida.

(The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)

Eucharis grandiflora. Definitely built along the Council Bluffs model, though a little less regular than the town. This is a really frustrating leaf to try to photograph -- somehow the venation always seems clearer in person than it appears in the photos -- but I'm impressed with it as a houseplant. I can't figure out why more people don't grow it indoors, but I know there has to be a reason.

Tillandsia cyanea. For obvious reasons, we don't build road networks that have a bunch of parallel roads with few or no cross-streets. T. cyanea will only get the reddish stripes if grown in pretty intense light, and once it gets the stripes, you have to be pretty close to the plant in order to see them.

Heuchera 'Georgia Peach.' The contrast on the photo isn't quite good enough to tell what's going on here exactly, but it looks to me like something in the Washington / Murphy mode.

Asplundia 'Jungle Drum.' Also not much like an actual street map, at least not from this far back. Up close, the veins are mostly parallel, with occasional cross-veins at irregular intervals. Basically a Washington/Council Bluffs cross. Incidentally, I'm basically convinced now that this is actually Asplundia 'Jungle Drum.' Carludovicas look nothing like this, as far as I can tell from the internet. I'll go back and update everything whenever I get the time. I've got quite a list of corrections piling up. UPDATE: Done!

Tulipa NOID, petal/sepals. Also basically a bunch of parallel streets, but the color is pretty. This is probably my favorite of the group, plain though it is.

Stromanthe sanguinea 'Triostar,' in black and white just to try something different. Stromanthes are total Council Bluffs plants, though that's hard to see in this photo. The light gray areas, at full magnification, look very orderly, though.

Monstera deliciosa 'Cheesecake.' Also not a good example of road-mappage. In fairness to me, the pictures were in this post long before the road-map thing got added, so I wasn't choosing them with an eye to how well they'd reflect it. Arguably, this means that I should have waited to write about it until I could pick representative pictures, but, um . . . hey, isn't that Halley's Comet?

Stromanthe burle-marxii. Council Bluffs all the way, if you look at the cross-veining between the main ones. The main veins on their own mostly resemble Fort Myers. The coloration on this picture freaks me out a little. There's something about it that evokes the word "electrical," for me.

Hoya polyneura. This might be the only Hoya I've ever seen that had venation significant enough to show up in a picture, and looks like sort of a London-Murphy combination. Nice plant. Not a lot of Hoyas out there that I'd consider growing just for the foliage, but H. polyneura is pleasant.

Begonia NOID. Not really vein-relevant (the main veins have that sort of extremely organized haphazardness that you find in Washington, though), but the colors and patterning are pretty. I bought a leaf of this and tried to start new plants from it by leaf-section cuttings, which I only just moved to individual pots a couple weeks ago. Most of those look like they're going to survive, though there are four or five that I'm not going to count on.

List: Houseplants With Large, Broad Leaves

This is a particularly fun category for me to contemplate, because I really like plants with big honking leaves. Always have. So for this list, I went around the house and measured the biggest leaves on some of my plants, to see how everything measured up. Because it was fun.¹

Some explanations and disclaimers:

The plants listed with photos below are plants I personally own, along with the measurements of the largest leaves from each. The photos are old ones, some of which were taken a long time before I measured the plants this week, and consequently may or may not show leaves the size I'm talking about.

Some of the plants in the "not pictured" list can produce considerably larger leaves than the ones with photos. Some of the plants that have photos are capable of much larger leaves than my personal plants have given me: they're not under ideal tropical conditions like they would prefer, and it stunts them a bit.


Anthurium "hookeri"² (27 x 9.5 in / 69 x 24 cm) This is more of a cry for help than anything else; I suspect the large leaves are the plant's way of telling me that it would like more light than it's receiving. However, a big leaf is a big leaf, and this definitely counts. The biggest leaf on this plant is the second largest leaf in the house (measured as leaf length times leaf width).


Anthurium andraeanum cvv. (some cvv.) (10.5 x 6 in / 27 x 15.5 cm) I've seen larger on greenhouse-grown (or Florida-grown) plants, but this is still pretty good, for plants that have been indoors for a long time. Look for plants with heart-shaped leaves and flowers; they tend to be larger than the varieties with more elliptical or lens-shaped leaves.


Asplundia 'Jungle Drum' (21 x 12 in / 53 x 30 cm) This plant gets third place at the moment, for biggest leaves in the house, though each new leaf seems to be larger than the one before, so I think it may have the ability to get first place eventually. I've seen few photos of a mature Asplundia, so I'm not sure what this is capable of.


Cordyline fruticosa (18.5 x 4.5 in / 47 x 11.5 cm) The plant in the photo has had some tough times since. It's had spider mites pretty bad (it seems to have them all the time), and then this spring it started to drop a lot of leaves for no obvious reason. I've moved it outside, and it seems to be getting better, but the new leaves are still not coming in quite as big as they used to. Most varieties will produce very large leaves, though a few will not.


Dieffenbachia cvv. (16.5 x 8.5 in / 42 x 22 cm) The photo is of 'Tropic Rain,' though in the house at the moment, 'Tropic Snow' is actually the Dieffenbachia with the largest leaf -- it's only half a centimeter longer than 'Tropic Rain,' but it's 4.5 cm wider. Both big, though.


Ficus lyrata (10.5 x 7 in / 26.5 x 17.5 cm) Ten and a half inches long is not really even close to the full big-leaf potential of Ficus lyrata, but it's the best mine is doing at the moment. Compared to, like, a Peperomia or something, that's still plenty huge.


Monstera deliciosa (12 x 9.5 in / 31 x 24 cm) My plain green Monstera has never really lived up to its potential, which I don't entirely understand, but 'Cheesecake' is pretty impressive already, and this isn't even close to the maximum possible leaf size. (For an idea about the maximum possible size, see this post at Life Among the Leaves.)


Philodendron 'Spicy Dog' (15.5 x 9.5 in / 40 x 24 cm) It remains to be seen how well 'Spicy Dog' is going to work indoors -- some Philodendrons like me a lot, and some don't -- but it's certainly got big leaves. And so far, it's behaving quite well, so I'm hopeful that there will be bigger leaves than this eventually.


Spathiphyllum cvv. (some cvv.) (20.5 x 8.5 in / 52 x 21 cm) This is probably quite a ways short of the plant's potential. We got a Spathiphyllum in at work once that was a good five feet tall. The leaves had to have been at least 30 inches (76 cm) long. I took a picture, but it didn't turn out well.


Strelitzia nicolai (20.5 x 13 in / 52 x 33 cm) In the house right now, Strelitzia nicolai has the single largest leaf, and 20.5 inches is actually nowhere near the plant's potential. If you want a plant with big leaves, this is your guy right here.

Honorable mentions:
Some compound leaves may still be very large, even if the individual leaflets never get huge. If my Schefflera actinophylla's leaves were solid, instead of divided into leaflets, it would actually beat Strelitzia nicolai in total leaf area. Tetrastigma voinierianum would also be competitive under those circumstances.

I also left out Philodendron bipinnatifidum, Radermachera sinica, Nephrolepis exaltata, Polyscias fruticosa, Zamioculcas zamiifolia, and palms (like Hyophorbe verschaffeltii, Chrysalidocarpus lutescens, or Chamaedorea cataractum), because although the leaves on all of these can become very large, they're also divided.³ Therefore, they look and function more like a large number of small, narrow leaves than they do like single large, broad leaves, even if they are, botanically speaking, single leaves with a lot of surface area. I'm looking at this list more from an interior-decorating angle than a botanical, what-technically-qualifies-as-a-leaf one, because I'm assuming that anybody searching for a list like this on-line is going to be more interested in the look than the botany.

Selenicereus chrysocardium is capable of producing very large stem segments, big enough that, again, were they actual leaves, and solid, my Selenicereus would outrank every plant on the above list in leaf area except for Strelitzia nicolai. However, they're not actual leaves, and they're not solid, so Selenicereus doesn't make the list.

Now, recommendations. The three plants from the above list that I think give the best balance between having huge leaves and easy care would be Spathiphyllum, Asplundia, and Strelitzia. Strelitzia does need good, bright light to do well, though. Asplundia tend to be sold as small plants (I've seen them in 4" and 6" pots here), and take some time to develop the truly huge leaves I'm talking about, but mine has only been in my care for three years, and even though it was tiny when I got it, it's a monster now. So it's not that long of a wait, really. Not all Spathiphyllum varieties are capable of getting to be large; the varieties 'Mauna Loa' and 'Sensation' are the two most common huge varieties. I don't know which I have, but I believe the five-foot one I talked about earlier was 'Sensation.'

For the anti-recommend, I'll go with Anthurium "hookeri." Not that hard to keep alive, but the huge leaves tear easily, and it just looks funny, having the new leaves come in huge like that, when the older leaves are darker, thicker, tougher, and smaller. If I really loved it and wanted it to be happy, I'd let it summer outside. Though it'd just burn. And then the wind would rip the leaves to pieces. So maybe it's more loving to keep it inside. I don't even know anymore.

Not pictured:

Aglaonema cvv.: the leaves tend not to be as big as some on the list, but they'll produce them even in fairly crappy conditions. 'Emerald Bay,' 'Brilliant,' 'Gold Dust,' and 'Silverado' are all potentially quite large.
Alocasia 'Frydek:' it's not easy to grow Alocasias indoors, but 'Frydek' has good-sized leaves when it's happy.
Alocasia amazonica 'Polly:' same as above.
Alocasia melo: I don't know for sure if this one even can be grown indoors, but the leaves are wicked cool.
Anthurium crystallinum 'Mehani:' dry air and/or soil will cause tears and gaps in developing leaves. Doable, but somewhat difficult.
Some Begonia species produce large leaves, though difficulty varies a lot from one variety to the next.
Calathea ornata, roseo-picta, rotundifolia, etc.: Calatheas are demanding, but they're gorgeous plants, with large, oval leaves.
Chamaedorea metallica: As for Aglaonema, the leaves are not huge huge, but they're bigger than average, and the plants are easy to grow.
Codiaeum variegatum: Leaf size varies a lot with the cultivar and the conditions in which it's being grown, but there are some varieties out there with respectably large leaves. Also not the easiest plant for indoors.
Colocasia cvv.: As with Alocasia, they're not easy, though certain Colocasia are capable of monstrous leaves.
Epipremnum aureum: I debated whether to add this species. They're capable of growing very large, Monstera-like leaves, if in warm, humid conditions and given something to climb. This is fairly difficult to pull off in the home, though, and plants being grown indoors year-round, even if they have large, split leaves when purchased, will usually revert to small, juvenile leaves inside. This is not to say it can't be done, just that you should probably not buy one with the idea that it's going to give you big huge split leaves eventually.
Eucharis grandiflora: I'm not sure what I think about these as indoor plants -- my plant and I have gone through good and bad spells -- but the leaves can get large in good conditions, and people can grow them indoors quite successfully. (See e.g. this post at Our Little Acre.)
Ficus elastica: A pretty obvious, but solid, option. Plants will grow larger leaves if they're not getting as much light as they'd like.
Homalomena 'Perma Press:' These plants get enormous, but the leaves stay in proportion to the rest of the plant, at least. I have a small one that's currently having a growth spurt, which has been fairly unproblematic as long as I didn't let it dry out.
Homalomena 'Selby:' Similar in size and shape to some of the medium-sized Dieffenbachias. They're terrifying if allowed to get too dry, which makes them not a good plant to grow if you're prone to panic,⁴ but if you can keep up with the watering, it might be okay.
Musa spp. (and Ensete spp.): Ornamental bananas are hard indoors -- they don't handle dry soil or air well, and they're (in my experience) very prone to spider mites too. They're also one of the few plants that can compete with Colocasia and Strelitzia on leaf size.
Phalaenopsis cvv.: As with Epipremnum, Phalaenopsis can sometimes have very large leaves when you first buy them, but a plant being grown indoors, unless your whole life is going to revolve around it or you have a perfect outdoor spot for it during the summer, is not likely to get huge. Not that huge is really the point with Phalaenopsis.
Philodendron 'Autumn,' 'Moonlight,' 'Prince of Orange:' Leaf size in Philodendrons has a lot to do with conditions. They're easy to keep alive, but if you want big leaves, you need to provide warm, humid conditions and a lot of light.
Philodendron 'Congo Green,' 'Congo Red:' as for 'Autumn.' 'Congo Green' strongly resembles a young Strelitzia nicolai but doesn't get anywhere near as big when mature.
Philodendron 'Florida Beauty:' I've never had one of these, but want one. I would guess that the situation is basically the same as for 'Autumn.'
Philodendron 'Imperial Green,' 'Imperial Red:' as for 'Autumn,' but, like, a lot more so.
Philodendron erubescens 'Red Emerald:' as for 'Autumn.'
Philodendron gloriosum: The leaves on my plant have been fairly decently-sized the whole time I've had it, though if I went back and looked at the pictures again, I would probably find that the leaves are smaller than they used to be. Still, it's not as drastic of a difference as for some of the other Philodendron species on the list. It's also more susceptible to spider mites, and has sort of an annoying growth habit.⁵
Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Kong' series ('Kong Mosaic,' 'Kong Rose,' etc.): I've pretty much given up on trying to keep coleus of any kind going indoors, but it can be done if you really, really want to.
Strelitzia reginae never grows leaves as big as S. nicolai, but they're still substantial.

I'm sure I've left things out, so hit me with any suggestions that come to mind.

-

¹ (I have very low standards for "fun.")
² I call it Anthurium "hookeri" because it was sold to me as A. hookeri, but almost certainly isn't: "hookeri" is a common name for Anthurium hybrids of unknown origin. Since it's the only name I have for the plant, I still use it, but "hookeri" is most likely wrong, and it's not a cultivar name either, therefore double quote marks.
³ Philodendron 'Spicy Dog,' which I suspect of being a cultivar of P. bipinnatifidum, is allowed on the list because its leaves aren't pinnate like bipinnatifidum's are.
⁴ And possibly not a great plant even if you aren't -- I've never seen an old 'Selby,' and I have to wonder why that is.
⁵ It looks like it would be a climber, but Philodendron gloriosum is actually a crawler. It doesn't produce enough leaves to be good in a hanging basket, and it's hard to repot. The thick, inflexible stems basically hit the edge of the pot and make a right angle straight downward, which means that if you want to repot one, you pretty much have to cut all the stems back in order to do it. I've been waiting for the courage to do this to my plant for a good year or more now.

Fun With Exotic Angel Tags

I had a lucky break, or at least what I hope is a lucky break, a couple weeks ago, when the husband and I went to Cedar Rapids. We stopped at Lowe's, and I found a set of four plants, heavily discounted, that I had considered buying months earlier. It's a plant I really like, and almost never see for sale anywhere, but lack of space at home, plus lack of money, kept me from buying them at the time. But then we went back maybe a month and a half later, and not only were they still there, but they were about a quarter of the original price. So I bought them all. (I guess I wasn't really that bothered by the lack of space.)

Your task: to use the identifying information provided by the retailer (Lowe's) and wholesaler (Exotic Angel), to deduce what I bought.

The pot had a sticker on it identifying them as ferns:


And the tags in the pots said they were Calathea roseo-picta 'Angela:'

(They butchered the format for the botanical name, of course, but one assumes that's what they mean.)
Sooooooo . . . it is obviously which plant?

 

 

 

Why, Asplundia 'Jungle Drum,' (usually sold as Carludovica) of course. I mean, duh.


EA has a logo, but doesn't appear to have an official company motto yet. Their greenhouses, according to the website, have signs in them saying "Taking care of our customers is, taking care of our future," [sic] which is the kind of vapid, mispunctuated slogan that would make me want to slit my wrists within the first month of employment there, and which might be as close as they get to a company motto. Clearly they need something better. I propose "Names, schmames."

Seriously, EA: part of "taking care of your customers" is letting them know what the hell kind of plant you're selling them, and what they're supposed to do with it. So either take care of your damn future already, or get a new slogan.

And lose the comma either way: it is wrong, and it makes you look stupid.

[Exceptionally] Pretty pictures: transmitted light -- Part VIII

The last few days have been kinda bad for me personally, and part of the badness was not having enough time to sort out material for the blog, so I have to dip into the transmitted light photo reserves. On the up side, the houseplant-toxicity book came in through interlibrary loan, so the long-awaited plant-toxicity post should be coming along fairly soon.

The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.

Epipremnum aureum 'Neon.' A variegated cultivar would probably have made for a more interesting picture, I know.

Caryota mitis. After considerable experimentation, I have concluded that we're just not set up to have Caryota mitis at work. They don't like it there, and I don't know why. I haven't had a good time with them personally, either, though it's been a long time since I've given it a serious try.

Begonia NOID (some kind of dragon-wing, I believe). There's a definite texture there, but it didn't turn out to be the best picture anyway.

Philodendron hederaceum 'Brasil.' This one kinda pleases me.

Bougainvillea NOID (bract). You can see the shadow of the true flowers on the left side.

Hypoestes phyllostachya. Contrary to expectations, these are not pink and green when viewed from below. It's more yellow and green; i.e., the colors in this picture are more or less accurate. I find this slightly disturbing.

Asplundia 'Jungle Drum.' Either this one or the Anthurium pic (below) is my favorite from this set. It's not that the venation is especially impressive, but I like the way the shadows fell in that checkerboard pattern on the right, and the fainter checkerboard in the center.

Paphiopedilum Supersuk 'Eureka' x Paph. Raisin Pie 'Hsinying' x Sib. I am probably capable of a better photo than this, but it's a tough get: the leaves are thick, and tend to shadow one another, and they're not very big, so they tend to let light flares into the shot.

Anthurium 'Pacora,' new leaf. I think the awesomeness here is self-evident.