Rules and Stuff 1) It's probably possible to vote more than once per poll, but please don't. If I believe that someone is voting repeatedly, I will throw out those results, repost the poll, and seriously question that person's priorities. 2) If you want to link to a poll on Twitter / Facebook / your blog / whatever and encourage your friends to come and pump up the support for your favorite plants, you are encouraged to do so. 3) You are also encouraged to leave comments on Rumble posts, if so moved. 4) All photos will enlarge if opened in a separate window/tab. 5) You can choose which plant is "best" according to whatever criteria you decide for yourself. My personal process is a bit convoluted.1 6) All polls will be open for three days.
Clockwise from top left: Philodendron hederaceum 'Brasil,' P. hederaceum micans, NOID, P. hederaceum 'Aureum' or something similar, species, P. hederaceum 'Frilly Philly.'
Clockwise from top left: Syngonium podophyllum 'White Butterfly' (?), NOID (possibly 'Confetti'), 'Pink Margarita,' NOID.
Clockwise from top left: Dracaena fragrans 'Massangeana,' 'Sol,' 'Massangeana,' 'Sol,' 'Massangeana.'
(Both Saxifraga stolonifera.)
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1 I'm deciding according to a hypothetical situation in which all of my houseplants are gone, as are all the other houseplants of the world, except for one producer/supplier/retailer. Said person is offering to restock me with one or the other of the plants in question but refuses to give me both. Which one would I choose?
Here's something I bet you didn't know: I wrote this post a week and a half ago. I mean, I had the pictures well before that, even, but somehow, at the beginning of February, I had this crazy productive period where I had nine, ten, eleven new posts stockpiled and ready to go all at the same time. This never happens. Or at least it had never happened before.
As I write, on February 12, I'm borderline hopeful that maybe by the time this post goes up, I will have a bathtub/shower in the plant room, which I can use for watering (the contractors for that are here right now, though the plant room shower doesn't appear to be the first item on the agenda), and that I'll have written the Phalaenopsis profile by the time you see this and it will be good, and I will have stopped discovering new scale infestations on beloved plants. This kinda seems like a lot to be hoping for, and I'm sort of tempted to get sarcastic at my own expense and be all like, why don't you hope for a billion jillion dollars, too, as long as you're wishing for stuff that's never going to happen. Idiot.
[pause]
Huh. I think I've hurt my own feelings.
Anyway. I'll let you know how those predictions turned out, at the end of the post, once this publishes. Meanwhile, to build suspense, we have more transmitted light photos. It's a pretty good batch again. At least the most colorful in quite a while.
(The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)
Schefflera ("Dizygotheca")elegantissima. Fairly difficult picture to get -- those leaves are narrow -- but it shows more detail than I thought I'd be able to get, so I guess it was a success.
Codiaeum variegatum NOID. That sound you're hearing is the sound of all the spider mites looking over your shoulder and drooling. Not everybody knows that spider mites drool audibly, but they do.
Philodendron hederaceum 'Brasil.' (Sometimes 'Brazil') I've done this one before, but this is a better picture than my first attempt.
Calathea NOID. I think probably a cultivar of C. roseopicta, but I couldn't find anything that looked enough like this plant to be certain. In any case, an edited version of this photo has been used as the PATSP header in the recent past, and I'm very pleased with the photo.
Codiaeum variegatum 'Mrs. Iceton.' What I like about this is the secondary veins, coming off of the midrib. Something about that bright, glowy green, set against the yellow and darker green, is deeply pleasing to me.
Begonia NOID. Begonia photos rarely turn out the way I expect them to.
Fittonia albivenis 'Pink Vein.' I hope, someday, to know whether it's albivenis or argyroneura or something else. I am currently deeply confused about Fittonia taxonomy.UPDATE: Pretty sure it's always F. albivenis.
Codiaeum variegatum NOID. Sometimes Codiaeum pictures just look sort of angry.
Calathea 'Moonlight.' This is one of those cases where the transmitted-light picture is significantly better than the way the plant usually looks. Or at least I think it is. This is my favorite from this batch.
Predictions:
Plant Watering Station: So far, no, despite considerable dust and noise. Though I am assured it will happen just any day now. As I have been assured for the last three months.
Phalaenopsis Profile: not even close. You'll probably see a profile for Dracaena reflexa 'Riki' before the Phalaenopsis one goes up. (UPDATE: Yep, that's how it happened. The Phalaenopsis profile is here.) I'm really starting to hate Phalaenopsis. Not that I was nuts about them to begin with.
Scale Infestation: there's been one full round of watering since finding scale on the Ficus and Neoregelias, and I didn't find any new ones. Of course, I was kinda focused on getting everything watered before it died, so maybe I wasn't doing a particularly close inspection, but I was trying to look for scale. So this is kinda good news.
Billion Jillion Dollars: Maybe. If "jillion" means something really, really small.
This list is another request from Joseph Tychonevich at Greensparrow Gardens, and I'm not sure if he was meaning anything fluffy-looking (in which case Soleirolia soleirolii, baby tears, would count) or anything with pinnate/bipinnate/tripinnate foliage, in which case Zamia spp., cardboard palms, would count). So I've tried to restrict myself to stuff that qualifies either way, stuff that both looks fluffy and soft (doesn't mean it actually is soft, by the way) and has finely-divided foliage.
In practice, this seems to mean mostly ferns and palms, but I found a couple other options too. It's a tough category. Additional suggestions are welcome.
Araucaria heterophylla. (Norfolk Island pine)
Asparagus plumosus (shown) and other Asparagus spp. (asparagus fern)
Chamaedorea elegans. (parlor palm)
Davallia tyermanii (shown) and other Davallia spp. (rabbits-foot fern)
Pogonantherum paniceum. (house bamboo)
Polypodium formosanum 'Cristatum.' (ET fern)
Polyscias fruticosa var. elegans. (parsley aralia)
I like the look of a lot of these, but have had bad experiences with quite a few of them, too, and even the ones I haven't had bad experiences with tend to be difficult plants for most people. So I can recommend Araucaria heterophylla, which is pretty agreeable if you give it decently bright light and are consistent about watering; Davallia spp., which are a bit more challenging than most plants but are pretty reasonable, as ferns go; and Polyscias fruticosa var. elegans, which, like the regular P. fruticosa, is not quite as fearsome as its reputation would suggest.
I anti-recommend Pogonantherum paniceum, because my own plant needed so much water, so often, that I could only keep it going for four and a half months, and it didn't look so hot by the end of about two. I also discourage people from Chamaedorea elegans whenever I get the chance: I know there are people out there who can grow them and find them easy, but I am not one of those people, nor is WCW. In my experience, C. elegans either get spider mites, then black tips, and die, or they get black tips, then spider mites, then die. Unless they're in a greenhouse. Where they just get spider mites. Finally, I'd suggest the reader not try Selaginella kraussiana without the aid of a terrarium. I haven't tried the plant at all, personally, with or without, but they have pretty extreme moisture needs.
I don't think there are actually any plants that are genuinely black black, but quite a few of them can come close, usually as very dark greens, reds, or purples.
There are also a couple very dark grays out there, but they're few and far.
As a group, these don't photograph terribly well. Too much light and they no longer look black; too little light and you can't see them against a dark background.
As always, I am aware that I've left things out, because there's no way not to. So I'm open to suggestions if anybody wants to leave some.
Alocasia 'Polly.' (African mask plant) More of a really dark gray-purple than a black.
Alworthia 'Black Gem.' I know it doesn't look like it in this photo. That's because it's not. Grown in bright light, though, this will turn a very dark green-black.
Begonia rex-cultorum 'Harmony's Red Robin,' and other Begonia cvv. to greater or lesser degrees. This is not a good example, since the leaves are mostly red, but the solid-color, darker plant I have, which is 'Texas Coffee Star,' 'Gladys Meyer,' 'Black Coffee,' or something like that, photographs weirdly.
Calathea NOID, possibly 'Medallion.' Also some other Calathea cvv. Usually just very dark green, though the leaves usually have a red or purple back to them which makes them look a little darker.
Ficus elastica 'Burgundy.' (rubber plant) The exact color depends on how the light hits it and growing conditions, but this is also a very good approximation of black.
Ludisia discolor. (jewel orchid; Ludisia discolor) Very dark red.
Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Niger.' (black mondo grass) Very dark green. Not much of a houseplant, really: it doesn't do a lot indoors. But it can be grown there. And it's very, very dark. So.
Pellionia pulchra. (watermelon plant) Very dark gray with even darker veins. This picture makes it look greener than it appears under normal circumstances.
Schefflera (Dizygotheca) elegantissima (false aralia) I still prefer calling it Dizygotheca, partly because it seems more appropriate for a plant with such dark green leaves to have a name containing the word "goth."
Zingiber malaysianum. (midnight ginger) Very dark red, sometimes verging on dark orange. Older leaves may be more green than red, especially in lower light.
If I had to choose just three, Alworthia 'Black Gem' would definitely make the cut, as would Zingiber malaysianum and probably Schefflera elegantissima. Though there are others in the above list I like, too. Alworthia 'Black Gem' is definitely the easiest of the above, and it self-propagates well, which are both endearing qualities as far as I'm concerned. Zingiber malaysianum is much harder (somewhere around a 6.1 on the difficulty scale), but the color of the leaves is fun (especially when light is shining from behind them), and the plant also has a light, spicy, gingery scent, which is only appropriate since it's a ginger.
Schefflera elegantissima, which I am still calling Dizygotheca in my head, is also kind of a pain, mostly with regard to pests, but the color and shape are either unique or very uncommon, and at least one of my plants is growing very well for me. (I had three others at one point in the past, which did not.)
Readers who like mood music with their plant-related reading, and are by and large cool with drag queens,1 are encouraged to play the video below. Or anybody who just misses RuPaul, for that matter: what has she been doing lately? Everybody else can just proceed to the text.
Skinny leaves, skinny stems, skinny petioles, fussy, high-maintenance, tall: what could Dizygotheca elegantissima be but a supermodel?
I happen to like this plant, though I hadn't given it a lot of thought until a few months ago. They have a reputation for being buggy, and, frankly, I have enough bug problems to worry about already. But . . . you know how it is. You see a plant every day, you develop a kind of obsession about it, you do the math one day and find out you could buy it with your employee discount for less than $3, and then suddenly it's sitting on the back of the toilet. Whoops.
Shortly thereafter, K-Mart had a bunch of these too: 4-inch pots containing three plants for about $3. So I bought three of those as well. Double whoops.
And the results have been, shall we say, mixed. They were all doing nicely until one of the periodic plant rearrangements moved the K-Mart batch to the mini-greenhouse. They sat there happily for a while and then suddenly began pitching leaves left, right and center. I don't know what happened precisely: there may have been a situation with some spider mites, though I was never sure if I saw any or not. In any case. No air circulation + soil that was basically pure peat2 + possibly some contributing spider mites = badness and leaf drop.
I took them back out, sprayed them with some neem oil, and gave them spots with better air circulation, and things improved, though most of the plants had bare spots where leaves had been lost, so I potted them all up together in a single pot to hide the pitifulness. I have no idea what's going to happen now: they have better soil, which should make them happy, and the grouping of them should keep the local humidity a little higher, but at the same time, air circulation is down, and they're in a warmer spot, which might encourage spider mites. Really no way to know until it happens. So far, things seem to be okay, though there are some early signs that there's going to be another round of leaf drop before it's over. Call it a hunch.
I should probably mention sooner or later that Dizygotheca elegantissima is not the correct name for this plant anymore. It is now placed in the genus Schefflera, along with the more common houseplants Schefflera actinophylla and S. arboricola. The family resemblance is sort of difficult to see with young plants, since elegantissima has very long, thin leaflets (as opposed to the others' oval ones), which are a dark, almost metallic black-green (as opposed to the others' plain green, or green with cream-yellow variegation), and so on and so forth. But if you look at more mature plants,3 and others in the Schefflera family (e.g. the pictures at davesgarden.com of S. digitata, S. taiwaniana, and the 'Nova' cultivar of S. actinophylla4), it becomes more obvious that no, Schefflera is probably the right genus. Readers who are still not convinced should look at this photo, also from davesgarden.com, which shows mature and immature foliage side-by-side, or this one, which shows mature plants.
This, to me, is a tragic loss of a good botanical name. More than that, really, because "Dizygotheca elegantissima," to me, somehow sounded the way the plant looked. It was just the right name for this plant. So I am making the conscious and public decision to continue to call it Dizygotheca for at least a little while longer, even though I wouldn't ordinarily don't do that, and I resent people who perpetuate inaccurate names, because I'm just not ready to give it up yet.
Anyway. There are at least a couple cultivars, which I wasn't aware of until pretty recently. Asiatica Nursery has one for sale which is called 'White Parsley;' I've also seen a plant going by the name 'Gold Crest' at Lowe's, which is different in having cream variegation around the outside edge of the leaves, and the Exotic Angel website lists a 'Galaxy' that they seem to think is something special, though I'm not clear why they think that, a variegated 'Galaxy,' and 'Olympia,' which seems to be the regular plant with unusually fat leaves – it's possible that this version grows mature leaves at a younger age, or it may just be that the leaves are broader all the way around.
I haven't met any actual human supermodels, but what I hear is that they're frighteningly skinny and demanding. So you can guess where I'm going with this.
One of the reasons you don't see Dizygotheca in more stores overlaps with Dracaena sanderiana: they aren't busy, fluffy, full-looking plants unless you stick a bunch of them together. There are up sides to this: they rarely take up much more horizontal space than their pot does, which can be useful in filling specific empty spots in a home, or in a group planting.5 But even so.
Older plants do get wider (because they develop longer petioles with age: this is also a general Schefflera characteristic), though they don't branch spontaneously. Cutting off the growing tip may encourage a too-skinny plant to bush out a little, but it wouldn't surprise me if it had to be done a few times before it took, or if the end result wasn't really all that great. (You think Gisele Bündchen does everything she's asked, the first time, precisely as instructed? Puh-leeze.)
This all makes Dizygotheca a plausibly good plant for apartment-dwellers or the otherwise space-challenged: they might get taller, but they're not going to push everything out of a small room like a Pandanus veitchii (screw pine) might. But. There are plenty of easier plants available for that situation, foremost among them the Dracaena family (D. fragrans in particular).
So far, mine are doing okay, and I’m pleased about this, because they are charming plants, especially when they're small. I especially love the weird metallic green-black color, which is unusual in the plant world. There aren't any other plants like it. But -- I worry about their long-term future here.
Which brings me, after 1600 some words, to the real problem with Dizygotheca elegantissima: she's a diva, in the Naomi Campbell mold. She doesn't like temperature swings, doesn't like dark places, doesn't like dry air or dry soil. Of course, soil that's too wet is also unacceptable, and good air circulation is a must (it just has to be air circulating at exactly the same temperature as all the previous air: no sharp changes.). Also all of the drinking glasses must be triple-wrapped in plastic, and if there are M-n-Ms in the dressing room, the blue ones must be removed.
Bugs, also, are potentially a huge issue. Spider mites love the Araliaceae family in general, and Scheffleras in particular, and as far as I can determine, the situation is even worse when it comes to mealybugs. So at the very least, if you're going to keep this one, you need to be prepared to be ready to jump to attention at the first sign of any trouble, because it can get out of hand really quickly. And girl, if there is a bug problem, you better work.
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Photo credit: all me.
1 Though RuPaul is in kind of a class by herself, as "drag queens" go. For those readers not up on gay culture, which I'm going to assume is most of them: being a drag queen is different from transvestitism, which in its strictest sense is a sexual fetish (man derives sexual pleasure from dressing up in women's clothing), and it's different from being transgendered, which in its strictest sense is a psychological and medical condition (more or less the "woman trapped in a man's body" thing). Most of the time, someone who does drag does so as theater: there is an event involved, like a lip-synching contest or a fundraiser or a parade, and the performer dresses as a woman to become the character they play for such events (a given performer typically only "does" one character during any given time period, though there are exceptions). The performer may or may not try to pass for (appear to the casual observer to be) a woman, depending on individual tastes and the demands of the event.
The point here is to make it clear that drag queens, and gay men in general, do not believe themselves to be women, nor do they, in most cases, want to be women. Drag is primarily theater. For this reason, the term "female impersonator," which is sometimes used for drag queens, can be offensive in certain contexts. They're not impersonating women; they're impersonating drag queens, and that's a whole different category.
The correct pronoun to use for a drag performer in costume is "she." Out of costume is "he." There are exceptions, including some performers who are genuinely indifferent to which pronoun you use, but this is the safer way to go until you hear otherwise.
I've only really had extended contact with one drag queen in my life, who may not be typical but who did take me with him to a drag show in Waterloo once: he did a lot of fundraisers for various worthy causes, and as performers are usually compensated for participating in this kind of thing, he made enough money doing it to sustain it as a hobby. He lip-synched, mostly to very sentimental, down-tempo stuff by Reba McEntire. Nice guy, though I worried about his safety sometimes, and still occasionally do. Worried a bit about my own safety, actually, that night, when he and I and several other people (some still in drag from the show and some not) went to Perkins for a 2 AM meal. But it was kind of worth it: I didn't have any desire to do drag at the time, and I still don't, but it's a pretty wild subculture, as subcultures go. I mean, the outfits alone. . . . 2 That's what they were planted in when I bought them, and I didn't change the soil because I didn't want to traumatize them unnecessarily. Bad call, it looks like. 3 (Continuing the trend we've seen with Monstera deliciosa, Syngonium podophyllum, Epipremnum aureum and others) 4 WANT! 5 Not that I approve of group plantings, as a rule. It's not impossible for them to work out, but even your longer-lived group plantings are still short-term: the plants with more aggressive root systems will, sooner or later, choke out the slower-growing plants, and then you either have to split the group up or let them die one by one. There's not really a middle ground here. And even that protracted unhappy ending is only available in the situations where you can get together a group of plants that 1) look okay together and 2) need more or less similar conditions. I've tried to assemble such groups for work purposes from time to time, and although there are occasionally combinations that turn out shockingly well (Peperomia argyreia, the "watermelon Peperomia," plus Dracaena sanderiana, plus a white-striped Chlorophytum comosum, or spider plant, all works out reasonably well. The Peperomia has gray and green stripes, the Chlorophytum is green and white striped, and the Dracaena ties it all together by being gray and green and white, and striped. I'm very proud of that one, though so far nobody's wanted to buy it.), by and large it's tough to do. A flower will be just a couple shades too orange, or a perfect fit will need a completely different watering regimen, or whatever. I suspect the flower shop guys get around this by just ignoring cultural requirements entirely and going with whatever looks good in the moment.
There. I said it. And I'm not sorry.
Have questions about PATSP? See the Infrequently Asked Questions post, or ask directly by e-mail. To e-mail, remove the two "d"s from the below address:
mrsubdjunctive@doutlook.com
Please note: I am a person, not a houseplant-care-advice vending machine. If you've asked a plant-care question and I responded, that took time and effort that I could have spent on something else, and it's nice if you acknowledge that with a "thank you."
Also: no, I will not help you draw attention to your Kickstarter. No, I do not need the services of a blog-ads optimizer. No, I'm not interested in promoting/reviewing/giving away your products. Fuck, no, I will not write for free for your blog. I know these things are important to you, and you feel that your case is so special that I would obviously make an exception to the rule if you asked me because of how special your thing is, but I assure you: it is not special, and I will not make an exception. (This means you, Mother Earth Living.)
As of 20 June 2021, comments may not be approved for several days, because Google / Blogger has made it less convenient for me to check them.
Lynn P. Griffith, Jr. Tropical Foliage Plants: a Grower's Guide (Amazon • B&N) Lynn P. Griffith, Jr. Tropical Foliage Plants: a Grower's Guide, 2nd Ed. (Amazon • B&N • Powell's)
Mr_Subjunctive used to work at a family-owned greenhouse / garden center in Iowa City, IA. As of 16 December 2021, he has 1234 houseplants, which is too damn many. Most are Schlumbergeras.
Photos on this blog attributed to mr_subjunctive are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. All other photos retain the licensing preferences of their owners and require permission for reuse. Contact mr_subjunctive for help in locating the sources for other photos.
Text on this blog: all rights reserved. Text may not be duplicated by any means without permission of its author, who is actually pretty easygoing under most circumstances and will probably say okey-dokey if you ask to reproduce something (but you still have to ask, and credit mr_subjunctive as the author of the excerpted part).
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