Six Plants I'm Currently Mad At

This turns out to be a pretty competitive field (wait'll you see the Dishonorable Mentions), but I've narrowed it down to six. By "I'm Currently Mad At," I mean "the idea of throwing the plant away entirely and never attempting it again has crossed my mind," though that's only a serious possibility with three of the six plants on the list.

1. Phalaenopsis NOID
I am so tired of orchids and all their fucking orchid bullshit. I'm not even exaggerating for comic effect. I know I've said this before, but this time I'm telling you -- I'm telling you -- orchids and I are never ever getting back together.¹ Remember how cautiously excited I was two months ago?

Yes, well. I really should have known better. Here it is now:

And here's the end of the spike:

Yep. Just fell right off, the whole top of the spike, including all the flower buds. I have no idea what happened to it -- it's conceivable that the top of the spike got caught in the shelves when I took the plant off to water or something, but I feel like I would have remembered that. It can't really have been chewed off by an animal -- Sheba would have said something. So I'm thinking it just dropped the top of the flower spike as a way of giving me the finger, because it's an orchid, and orchids are fucking assholes.

The Phalaenopsis is being permitted to stay, for the time being, but the very first excuse I have to throw it out, it's going out. (Even if it calls me up and it's like, "I still love you.")


2. Furcraea foetida 'Medio-Picta'
If my fury at the Phalaenopsis is white-hot,² then with Furcraea I'm only a dull red. The plant's done well outside this year, and has grown some really nice, broad leaves, enough that I'm thinking the current pot is probably way too small for it. And for most of the summer, this was making me happy.

But I found a scale insect on it a week or two ago. So far, it's just been the one, and I did give the plant a pretty thorough inspection so that might be the extent of it, but what are the odds that it's really only one scale insect? Is it ever just one?

Et tu, Furcraea?


3. Polyscias balfouriana (variegated)
The Phalaenopsis is being spiteful, the Furcraea is disloyal, and the Polyscias balfouriana is catatonic. It's never been one of my best plants or anything, but when I got it, in July 2010, it looked like this:

And now, after growing for three years, one of the plants in the original pot has died,³ and the other looks like this:

Weak stem (it periodically leans over enough to throw itself off the shelf it lives on), not much foliage (that's actually the most it's had in a very long time, in that picture), regular spider mite infestations, which it passes to other plants -- P. balfouriana is another one that's probably going in the trash as soon as I have any kind of excuse. Considering its history, I should maybe not wait for an excuse.


4. Synadenium grantii
It was bad enough that Synadenium grantii caught the fungus that's been infecting all the Euphorbias.⁴ I moved it outside, in the hope that this would help it shake the fungus, and that actually seems to have worked.⁵ The problem is that it's not happy with being outside, either. Although when I did the research for the Synadenium profile, I found information telling me that they could survive temperatures down to about 20F / -7C, leaf damage apparently begins somewhere in the high 50s F, or about 14C, and takes the form of broad tan patches on exposed leaves:

I suppose this is my own fault, for not figuring out sooner that I was seeing cold damage. (I'd thought it was sunburn.) The plant could maybe have explained itself better, though.


5. Eucharis grandiflora
So I have three pots of Eucharis now. The one that's stayed in the house is doing fine. Not blooming or anything, but it's doing fine. The two that are getting to summer outdoors, on the other hand, started looking really ratty almost as soon as they went out. Well, I thought, that's to be expected -- probably it's a combination of sunburn and getting thrashed around by the wind. The replacement leaves will be better. But the replacement leaves were not better. And then, one day, I lifted up one of the pots for some reason and there was this fat, gray-green caterpillar underneath it. I picked it up and flung it into the yard, hoping the birds would deal with it. Then a few days later, I was watering, and I saw a similar-looking caterpillar, curled up, floating in the water inside the pot. So I picked it up and threw it out onto the driveway (figuring that the birds would be quicker to spot it on concrete than they would on grass). I haven't seen any caterpillars since then, but it almost doesn't matter: the replacement leaves are coming in slowly, and the older leaves are trashed almost beyond recognition. So the Eucharis won't be going outside next year either, even if they beg and plead and claim that that's the only way they'll ever flower.

The plants that got to go outside have, as a group, been very resistant to bugs -- the only other cases of visible insect damage outside have happened on two Agaves, and I think are also caterpillar-related. But the Eucharis have taken a real beating. Makes me unhappy.

The only positive note is that I have finally achieved houseplant pest bingo. (That'll teach me not to hope publicly for caterpillar infestations, even in jest.)


6. Epipremnum aureum 'Neon' and 'Marble Queen'
Lastly: I can grow Epipremnum aureum varieties just fine, beautifully even, so long as I avoid anything that they might interpret as transplanting.

Which is to say, I've had no problems water-rooting cuttings. But when I put the rooted cuttings into soil, I lose about two-thirds of them. Every single time, no exceptions. Soil-rooting cuttings is a little better, but even then, I lose about half. And repotting is a disaster every single time, no exceptions. (You'd think I would learn.)

'Neon' and 'Marble Queen' made the list because I've tried to root cuttings of 'Marble Queen,' and I've tried to repot 'Neon,' and both have been calamitous. Here's what 'Neon' looked like before the repotting:

And after repotting, removal of obviously dead vines, and cutting a few back in hopes that they'd resprout:

What did I do wrong? I have no idea. It certainly seemed like repotting was warranted: the plant was always wilted when its turn for water came around, sometimes badly, and it was dropping leaves as a result. Giving it more soil, to keep it wetter longer, seemed the logical solution. But instead, the plant punishes me by committing suicide. What a dick.

I don't have a photo for the 'Marble Queen' cuttings, but you'll have to just trust me that they look even worse. Everybody else in the entire world can do anything they like to this plant and it's fine, but -- I don't think it's for me.

So . . . yeah.

I'll have a post later, about plants that aren't making me angry, but I feel it's important for houseplant "experts"⁶ to acknowledge that there is no level of horticultural skill that will completely prevent plants from being douchebags.


Dishonorable mentions:

• Aloe variegata: overwatered, root rot. Still around. Unlikely to try again.
• Anthurium crystallinum 'Mehani:' never did very well here, probably due to dryer and cooler air than it would have liked. Was doing even less well this year, which I suspect might have been related to soil breakdown. Discarded. Almost certainly will never try again.
• Araucaria heterophylla (or maybe A. columnaris): root rot and massive branch drop because I overpotted last winter. Discarded. (This one was really painful: I'd had the plant for five and a half years.) I'll probably try it again.
• Begonia 'Puffy Clouds:' too much direct sun and/or too hot? Discarded. Unlikely to try again.
• Columnea microphylla: sudden decline for no discernable reason. Discarded. Unlikely to try again.
• Cyanotis kewensis: stem dieback, possibly due to underwatering. Still around.
• Episcia 'Pink Smoke:' Never did well. Discarded. Unlikely to try again.
• Episcia "prayer plant:" too wet, too dry, or possibly both at once. Still around. Will probably restart from cuttings.
• Episcia 'Suomi:' slow steady decline that turned into a fast and ever-accelerating decline; reason unknown. (I'm getting pretty fed up with Episcias.) Still around, but only barely. Will probably allow to remain until it dies and then not try it again.
• Euphorbia milii hybrid with large yellow flowers: I cannot make the fungus go away on the small specimen (indoors); the large specimen got blown over repeatedly so the leaves are all creased/torn/punctured/scarred. Still around.
• Euphorbia pseudocactus: one tall stem turned brown and rotted away for no obvious reason very early in the summer. A second big tall new branch started growing after that. It managed to hold itself erect for about a week, then flopped over, and has been growing more or less horizontally ever since. The rest of the plant isn't doing anything and never really has. Still around.
• Euphorbia tirucalli 'Firesticks:' tried to blind me that one time. Still around.
• Euphorbia trigona: I cannot get rid of the fungus on the cuttings in the basement, though the parents, outdoors, are doing okay. Still around.
• Euphorbia trigona 'Red:' I cannot get rid of the fungus, but also the parent plants won't branch and sometimes get root rot. Still around.
• Ficus 'Green Island:' sort of continuously dropping leaves, whether in or outside. Refuses to grow vertically. Still around.
• Gasteraloe 'Green Gold:' definite severe root rot, due to overwatering. Still around, but unlikely to make it back into the house this fall. Unlikely to try again.
• Gasteraloe 'Midnight:' has never liked me very much. Probably some root rot. Almost certainly will never try again.
• Homalomena 'Emerald Gem:' both under- and overwatered, leading to substantial defoliation. And then the bugs (spider mite-like, but I was never sure if they really were spider mites) showed up. Discarded. I'm not desperate to replace it, but I might at some point, if I see one cheap.
• Kohleria 'Queen Victoria:' (chronically?) miswatered. Discarded. Pretty much certain never to try again.
• Neoregelia 'Fireball:' never rebounded from a repotting several years ago; I don't know what its problem was. Discarded. Unlikely to try again.
• Pereskia aculeata var. godseffiana: scale. Discarded. I still have a back-up plant.
• Philodendron erubescens 'Red Emerald:' small, weak growth for about a year, year and a half now. Lots of leaf drop. Still around.
• Schefflera actinophylla: has not performed well outdoors. A tremendous amount of leaf drop, poor color, gets blown over a lot by the wind. Still around. I'll keep growing it, probably, but it's not going outside again next summer.
• Selenicereus anthonyanus: does not appear to understand how to grow the long, weird stems that are the main reason to grow it. I don't know why it won't and S. chrysocardium will. Still around.
• Vriesea splendens: flowered, then started to produce a replacement rosette, but the replacement rosette is really struggling for no obvious reason. Still around, but I suspect its days are numbered. The smaller duplicate plant rotted out and died last March.
• Zamioculcas zamiifolia: another one like Epipremnum aureum, that does beautifully until I try to pot it up, at which point it begins falling apart. A less water-retentive potting mix might help, but I'm more inclined to just let it die and never attempt to grow it again: I don't especially like the look of it in the first place. (The leaflet cuttings of 'Zamicro' are doing fine, but I haven't tried to repot them, either. Maybe I never will.)

-

¹ Unless it's one of the blue-dyed Phalaenopsis, because I have a theory about the identity of the blue dye that I'd like to test. So I might buy one of those, but only so that I could grind up the flowers in a mortar and pestle and perform science experiments on them. Which would actually probably be kind of cathartic.
Also: sorry for the earworm. I couldn't resist.
² Probably more blue-hot, I think. (I feel like most of the energy being given off by my fury is being emitted in the ultraviolet / soft x-ray range.)
³ (I cut it back because it was hitting the lights and scorching, but it didn't resprout. I kept hoping, because the stem was staying firm, even if it wasn't producing a new growing tip, but eventually it went soft and I pulled it out of the pot.)
⁴ Synadenium grantii is officially Euphorbia umbellata, according to Plant List. The name I learned before that was Euphorbia pseudograntii. I'm sticking with the name I learned originally, partly because the taxonomists don't seem to have made up their collective mind yet, and partly because if I do decide to change it, there's a whole lot of blog posts that'll need to be edited too, and I would prefer not to do that.
⁵ It worked better on some species than others. E. lactea and E. tirucalli cleared up pretty quickly but weren't that bad off in the first place; Euphorbia milii and Synadenium grantii had pretty serious problems but improved after a few weeks. E. trigona took most of the summer to get there, but is good at the moment, as far as I can see. Pedilanthus 'Jurassic Park 2' may never shake the fungus.
⁶ (a designation I'm not happy seeing applied to myself, by the way)

Somewhat last-minute grab bag

Okay, so I spent the first half of yesterday trying to work on yet another post about dyed orchids, because I saw something new about them and had All! These! Ideas! about what that signified. The further I got into writing about it, the more interesting it got, until: I realized that I'd been misreading something, and the whole case I was trying to build fell apart. Some of the post is probably still salvageable, but it may be a while before I can work on it again.

Which means I need something to write about, so here's a grab bag of recent random plant events, new plants that aren't actually new anymore, and unfinished business:


1. Philodendron bipinnatifidum sucker


I'm not sure this signifies anything particularly good; the parent plant (which started out as my mother-in-law's, and she gave it to him twelve years ago) dropped three out of four leaves at about the same time this side shoot began to grow. I worried that this meant it was giving up, but it's since produced a new leaf, so apparently it's going to stick with us a while longer. (The leaf shedding was possibly a response to being cold; it sits on the floor of the plant room.)

This doesn't mean a lot -- I don't intend to try to root the sucker separately or anything -- but it's an event.


2. Tacca chantrieri flower, close-up


Also not hugely significant, but this is the first time I've gotten the chance to take a photo of the flowers when fully open and not yet dying. (Previous attempts.) So that's what they look like.

Yep, still weird.


3. New plant: Euphorbia milii 'Candyland'


This is really stretching the definition of "new plant," since I got it last November. But I hadn't written anything about it yet, and have meant to, so here it is. This is a distinctly different kind of variegation from the other variegated E. milii I've encountered; that one was speckled, and this one has white margins. The flowers -- which I've not yet seen on my own plant -- are red. It's been a little pouty, not growing much since this photo was taken. I suspect it may be unhappy with the amount of light it's getting.


4. Springtails on a dead Cyclamen


The Cyclamen experiment is over. This is also fairly old news; it was pronounced dead on 7 January 2012. The cause of death was probably overwatering during dormancy.

I don't think I'm inclined to try Cyclamen again. It was fun getting it to rebloom the one time, and I do still think they're gorgeous plants, foliage and flowers both. It's just difficult to keep track of when I'm supposed to be watering and when I'm not. Plants with pronounced dormancies are untrustworthy. (The reader may, at this point, wish to pause for a moment to say a short prayer on behalf of my new-as-of-last-fall Amorphophallus konjac bulb.)

Also, this is the best picture I've gotten yet of springtails, which I've run across before, once when they were killing my Anthurium seedlings and baby ferns, and then again when they kept coming out of the drainage hole of our Dracaena sanderiana: I thought I'd posted pictures of the latter but apparently I never considered the photos I got good enough to post. (Also, if you're wondering: the D. sanderiana was originally the husband's, though I've been taking care of it for the past few years. I don't especially like it, and the husband actually has given me permission to throw it out, but it's one of those things: I don't feel like I can get rid of it unless it dies on its own, and it won't die on its own.)


Springtails aren't ordinarily a huge problem for indoor plants. I mean, I don't think there are any situations where they're beneficial, but they eat decaying organic matter, which is basically what potting soil is, so they generally won't do anything much to plants. The Anthurium seedlings and baby ferns suffered only because they were planted in vermiculite, and there was really no organic matter available for the springtails to eat except for the baby plants.


5. Murraya paniculata seed sprouts


Not a shock. We've seen this before, fairly recently, but in this particular case, I labeled the pot when I started the plant, so I know that germination took 28 days to reach this point. (This photo was taken 27 March 2012.)


6. Unfinished business: Furcraea foetida 'Medio-Picta' offsets


Among the plants that have responded strongly to being fertilized regularly are the Furcraeas. These two are both offsets from my parent plant, which I got in June 2009. Whichever one is oldest got started in May 2010, and hadn't really done much as of March 2011. The second one was potted up in July 2011, a year behind the other, which makes it odd that they're both so nearly the same size.


7. Question for the Hive Mind: the new Ficus benjamina


I've noticed that one of the shoots on the new Ficus benjamina has an unusual variegation to it, which none of the rest of the plant seems to have. It's sort of the reverse of the E. milii 'Candyland' situation, in that I've previously only seen marginal variegation on Ficus, not speckling, whereas with the Euphorbia I'd seen speckling, but not marginal.

I'm wondering whether this is a virus. There are, I know, some plant viruses that cause this kind of speckling in their hosts, though I couldn't find any photos of Ficus benjaminas that resembled this. The shoot in question has four leaves, all spotted more or less the same way, and it seems improbable that a virus in one tiny branch of a multi-plant pot would hurt anything much, so I'm inclined to leave it alone (or, possibly, try to propagate it, if it seems robust enough to cut back), but I'm wondering what everybody else thinks about this. Is it a virus? Might it be a virus? If it is a virus, how much should I care? And if it isn't a virus, then what the hell is it?

Random plant event: Furcraea foetida offset

Happy Pi Day!

I'll admit that today's subject isn't a particularly exciting photo, but it's one of those cases where what it represents is exciting. This plant had been growing in the parent plant's pot for quite a while; I first noticed there was a pup last May.

At some point this winter, I noticed that it didn't seem to be doing so well -- the parent plant and I haven't figured out this whole winter-watering situation yet. I let it go for a long time, then water, but then when I water, a leaf or two will yellow and die. I haven't figured out whether that's because I watered, or if it's because I let it get really dry first. It's usually grown outdoors, so there's not a lot of information out there about how to do it indoors.

Anyway. So at some point I noticed that the pup seemed to be doing poorly, more so than the parent, so I pulled it out and gave it its own pot. I didn't figure the two-leafed pup would survive the winter -- bad time to transplant, it was already stressed -- but it seemed to be needing more water than what it was getting.

The news today is that the offset is growing a third leaf:


It's still tiny, obviously (the pot is 3 inches along the diagonal), and it's not clear that it's ever going to grow huge, healthy leaves like the parent, but at least it's growing, and I can still have hope that it will grow huge, healthy leaves someday. Considering that I was pretty sure I'd killed it by moving it, that's pretty good news.

Random plant event: Furcraea foetida 'Medio-Picta' offsetting

As ridiculous as it might be for me to be growing a full-sun, non-cold-hardy succulent that can potentially reach 8-10 feet (~3 m) in diameter, and to be doing this in Iowa, and indoors, I do really love my Furcraea foetida. I worry about it sometimes, too, like for example this winter it lost several leaves, and I don't know whether that was something that was going to happen regardless, or if I was watering it too much, or not enough, or whatever. But apparently I haven't been too terrible, because it looks like it's reproducing!


I'm really surprised by this; it hadn't really occurred to me that it was capable of offsetting (none of my Agaves have offset, or even looked like they were thinking about it), much less that it might go ahead and do so. No idea how long it might take for this to become a viable plant on its own. Pretty stoked about it anyway, though.

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

Having a really bad day so far (I'm writing this on Wednesday night), and frankly Tuesday wasn't anything to get real excited about either. The election results from Maine are a lot of this, but it also turns out that at some time in the last two weeks, I've lost a plant (a couple Ficus maclellandii cuttings I managed to root, which were starting to really get going in a 6-inch pot). And by "lost a plant," I don't mean that it died: I mean I have no idea where it is. It's just disappeared. This has never happened before. (UPDATE: Ficus was located around 11 AM local time, hiding behind a large Asplundia. In retrospect, of course, I totally remember putting it there.)

As far as the Maine stuff goes, I don't know what I could say that wouldn't be completely obvious. It's hardly the definitive answer about Maine or anything else, it worries me w/r/t Iowa, and I am angry and disappointed on behalf of the gay and lesbian Maine residents who were looking forward to being able to marry their partners. I can only imagine how devastating.

Can pretty pictures cheer me up? Doubtful. But they're unlikely to make stuff worse, so we may as well try. Limited commentary, compared to previous batches, because I kinda ran out of time. But given my mood, you don't really want the commentary anyway.

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

Selenicereus chrysocardium.

Abutilon theophrasti (velvetleaf). Big Iowa cornfield weed: lots of money is spent on killing these. I like the plant, personally. My dad, memorably, informed me once that if you find yourself in a cornfield with an urgent need to go to the bathroom, velvetleaf works well as a toilet paper substitute. I have, thankfully, never needed to check this out, though I wouldn't be surprised, I guess. Considerably more detail is visible if opened in separate window.

Zea mays (corn).

Peperomia obtusifolia 'Gold Coast.'

Dracaena reflexa 'Song of India.'

Furcraea foetida 'Medio-Picta.'

Callisia fragrans. Not particularly difficult to grow, and the purple color it turns in full sun is pleasant enough. Weirdly impossible to find for sale.

Dieffenbachia 'Sterling.'

Aglaonema 'Brilliant.' A really delightful plant; one of my best-behaved, prettiest, and all-around wonderfullest varieties of one of the best-behaved, prettiest, and all-around wonderfullest plants.

Caladium 'Carolyn Whorton.'

The BDSP, and other new plants

So last Monday, after my last (unless I do seasonal help at some point, or unless I'm called back for a day or two here and there in the next little bit) day (except for the part in the morning I missed because of a prior appointment) of work (though putting away a tropical order is as enjoyable as work ever got, so it's not work in the usual sense, and it wasn't exactly working for money, either), I got some new plants. I will now share pictures, as four out of the five are pretty interesting, at least to me, and I don't want the fifth to feel left out so I'll include it too. The photography herein is going to be a little meh, because I haven't quite figured out the optimal lighting situation for the new place, but you'll at least get the general idea.

So let's meet the new residents --

#1 -- Senecio macroglossus, 3", $3.95 from work


I talked myself into this one while writing the post about its flower. I was never particularly good at keeping it happy before, and I may not be all that good at keeping it happy again, but it seemed worth trying.

#2 -- Pleomele thalioides, 8", $39.95 from work


This is the one I was the most excited about getting: it photographs poorly, and I have no idea whether it will prove to be a good plant indoors: davesgarden.com doesn't recognize anything by the name "Pleomele" except for Dracaena reflexa (which used to be Pleomele reflexa), a Garden Web search for it turned up no matches (I didn't try just "Pleomele" by itself, because I figured doing so would turn up nothing but Dracaena posts), Wikipedia has heard of the genus but not this particular species, and even Google only comes up with 189 hits, the overwhelming majority of which are either informationless lists of species names or written in languages I do not speak. So I have no idea. But we'll try it. What the hell.

#3 -- Furcraea foetida 'Medio-Picta,' 6", $10.99 from somewhere other than work

This plant is apparently known to everybody but me as a false agave. I'd never seen it or heard of it before. I wasn't all that excited about seeing it, either, because when I did a google search for it, what came up were fairly boring-looking green plants that looked just like Agaves in every particular except for being, somehow, even less interesting. What actually came in, in the order, was this:


Which, you know, OMFG. Unfortunately, OMFG also pretty accurately describes the price tag ($89.95 -- not the priciest thing on the shipment, and not particularly unreasonable, given the size and apparent age, but a higher cost than I was prepared to take on). However: a few weeks back, WCW had informed me that there were very cheap Agaves for sale in town, and I, expecting, you know, an Agave, had dutifully gone down there to check it out. What was there instead were these fleshy, twisty things that had the general shape of an Agave but were nothing like any Agave I was familiar with. In fact, they were so unlike what I was expecting that I walked past them like three times before finally asking the person at the counter if they had Agaves, and where, and when she took me to these, I was kind of befuddled.

But, so. You see where this is going. Coaxed the husband into going back to the other place, and bought a small one, since I couldn't have the big one from work:


In theory, all we need is time, and this one will turn into the other. Good luck, buddy.

#4 -- Zingiber malaysianum, "midnight ginger," 4", $9.95, from work


Most of the time around here, "ginger" means a variegated Alpinia zerumbet, a perfectly nice plant as plants go, but one I've never felt that much desire to grow. They seem to dry out quickly, and I've accepted the fact that I don't do well with plants that can't handle drying out more than they would prefer every once in a while. Plus they get big, even in containers, and I knew I didn't have that kind of room. But this -- this is something special. (I am told that WCW just about crapped her pants upon finding out that these were available again; it's apparently been five years since they were last on the availability list.)

Like the Pleomele, I have no idea whether this will be growable. But it's got awesome dark red-black leaves, and it smells nice (just barely, but enough to notice), and it gives spectacular photos by transmitted light, so we're going to give it a shot.

#5 -- The Big Damn Screw Pine (Pandanus veitchii), 8", $29.95, from work


This guy's been talking to me for a very long time: he was there when I started work, and had been there for some unknown period of time before that.

Now, I think Pandanus are amazing plants -- relatively easy to grow indoors (I've had four or five small ones for quite a while, and never any problems except when I let them get too dry. Even then, they're fairly forgiving.), fast-growing, potentially huge, etc. There's just the one problem: the leaves have sharp spines all along the margins and on the underside of the leaf, along the midrib, which are not only sharp and omnipresent, they're also hooked, so it's very hard to do anything to the plant without getting multiply stabbed, having one's clothes caught, etc. Also, on me at least, the spines leave little itchy welts that last for about a day, day and a half before going away.

Hooked spines are easily visible if the picture is opened in a new window.
But it's also like four feet tall. And for only thirty bucks, how could I say no, right?

So although I don't typically name my plants, this one is going to be the exception: he will be called the Big Damn Screw Pine, or BDSP. And shortly, I'm planning to up-pot him, which should be good for lots of swearing, after which he will be slightly taller, and then (if the ones at work are any indication) he should then begin to grow really quickly. Pandanus don't seem to mind being rootbound especially, but if they've got room to grow, they'll do so in spades.

So if I play my cards right, by winter I may be able to grow him to the point where he'll have to have his own bedroom, because we won't be able to walk around him anymore without having body parts sliced off. I don't know why this should be a goal, but it kinda is. (I told you I like the mean, stabby, poisonous ones.)

And there you have it. Comments? Anybody want to share previous experiences with, or helpful tips for, Pleomele, Zingiber, or Furcraea?