Rumble Among the Jungle, Matches 2.13-2.16

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.

The results for matches 1.61 to 1.64 were posted in this morning's post, if you haven't already seen that.

Today's matches:

Match 2.13
Platycerium spp. (staghorn fern) vs. Gynura aurantiaca (purple passion plant)

(Unidentified Platycerium spp.)

(All Gynura aurantiaca.)





Match 2.14
Aloe vera (medicinal aloe, burn plant) vs. Schlumbergera cvv. (holiday/Thanksgiving/Christmas cactus)

(Top: young Aloe vera. Bottom: mature A. vera.)

Center and top left: Schlumbergera 'Caribbean Dancer;' others are NOID.





Match 2.15
Pachira aquatica (money tree) vs. Cordyline fruticosa cvv. (ti plant)

(Pachira aquatica.)

Clockwise from top left: Cordyline fruticosa 'Florica,' species, NOID, NOID which might be 'Chocolate Queen,' 'Kiwi.'





Match 2.16
Mimosa pudica (sensitive plant) vs. Hibiscus rosa-sinensis (tropical hibiscus)

Both Mimosa pudica. Left photo belongs to, and is used with permission from, Liza Wheeler at Good to Grow.

All unidentified cvv. except left center ('Mrs. Jimmy Spangler') and bottom right ('Sunny Wind').





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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?

Rumble Among the Jungle, Matches 1.29-1.32

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.

Results for matches 1.13 to 1.16

The bracket selection was more or less random,² so very similar plants occasionally wound up in competition with one another during the first round. Two such pairings happened in this batch, but y'all appear to have had no difficulty choosing one over the other. Interestingly, the vote proportions wound up being eerily similar for each of the four contests in this set, with the winner getting about 67% of the vote in each case.

Match 1.13 saw Ficus maclellandii beating Schefflera elegantissima easily, 71 to 34, despite both plants having a narrow/pointy/treelike thing going on. I guess this means that some of you have tried to grow S. elegantissima.
In match 1.14, the votes were similar, in favor of Strelitzia nicolai and S. reginae over Guzmania cvv., 69 to 37.

Ficus maclellandii and Strelitzia nicolai/reginae both advance to match 2.7, where they will face off against one another. That won't be posted until October 8, which hopefully will be enough time for me to decide which one to vote for.

Match 1.15 was the other one where I thought maybe the combatants were maybe too similar, both being pretty common vining plants, but you guys chose Philodendron hederaceum cvv. over Syngonium podophyllum cvv. by, again, about a two to one margin (68 to 37).
And finally, in match 1.16, Dracaena fragrans cvv. handily defeated Saxifraga stolonifera, 71 to 36. Except not handily, because they don't have hands. Rootily. Leafily. Something like that.

Philodendron hederaceum cvv. will face Dracaena fragrans cvv. on October 8, in match 2.8, which will also be a difficult one for me to vote on. Maybe I should just not vote that day.

But there are votes to be cast today, so have at 'em:

Match 1.29
Pachira aquatica (money tree) vs. Pilosocereus pachycladus

(Pachira aquatica.)

(Pilosocereus pachycladus.)





Match 1.30
Cordyline fruticosa cvv. (ti plant) vs. Euphorbia lactea cvv.

Clockwise from top left: Cordyline fruticosa 'Florica,' species, NOID, NOID which might be 'Chocolate Queen,' 'Kiwi.'

Clockwise from left: Euphorbia lactea, Euphorbia lactea crest grafted onto a E. drupifera base, crested E. lactea.





Match 1.31
Ravenea rivularis (majesty palm) vs. Mimosa pudica (sensitive plant)

(Both Ravenea rivularis.)

Both Mimosa pudica. Left photo belongs to, and is used with permission from, Liza Wheeler at Good to Grow.





Match 1.32
Hibiscus rosa-sinensis (tropical hibiscus) vs. Dracaena sanderiana (lucky bamboo, ribbon plant)

All unidentified cvv. except left center ('Mrs. Jimmy Spangler') and bottom right ('Sunny Wind').

(Dracaena sanderiana, variegated cv.)





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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?
² (I had a list of plants in Excel, created a column of random numbers next to it, then sorted according to the random numbers. I swapped a few plants around after that, if it looked like two plants that would be very popular were facing off against one another in the first round, so the end result is not strictly random, but it's pretty close.)

Walkaways Part 3

The term "walkaways" officially replaces "stuff I didn't buy" for the posts about interesting plants I didn't purchase. This kind of makes it sound like the plants walked away from me, instead of me walking away from them, but we'll let that slide: it's snappier, doesn't take nearly as long to type, and describes the situation well enough for my purposes. Thank you to N.N., who suggested the term by e-mail. (I'd use your full name, but I thought maybe you'd rather have the anonymity. Let me know.)

These are all from my ex-work.

First up is Agave geminiflora. Not a terrible-looking plant, though also kind of plain. And the tips of the leaves are in fact really sharp, and it was $25. So I didn't buy, though they had several of these so I can change my mind later if I want to.


The resemblance to a Koosh Ball (do they still make those?) is amusing. Though you wouldn't want to play catch with one of these.


Next up, Pachira aquatica, which for some reason we had a lot of trouble getting in while I worked there. Not that I tried that hard: it wasn't like the customers were demanding them or anything. (In fact, I don't think I ever had one single request for a Pachira, in a year and a half of working there.) But it didn't matter, because when we did try to bring them in, we didn't get them for one reason or another: failure to make a minimum order, trucking company error, or whatever. I don't remember everything that happened.

Anyway. Lowes had them often enough that if I had wanted one, I could have gotten one, and I am apparently just not that interested. I'm partly put off by the number of Pachira-related posts at Garden Web, which make them sound difficult. I don't know if they are or not, but Schefflera arboricola covers similar ground and I know how to care for Schefflera already, so who cares about Pachira?


And then finally the real reason for the post, Alocasia rugosa melo, which WCW was so enthusiastic about that she all but dragged me into the back room to show it to me:


The leaves are approximately the weight and consistency of non-corrugated cardboard. Like, cereal-box cardboard. And the texture is . . . I'm at a loss for words to describe the texture. My mother had a 1960s hard plastic suitcase that came close.

I took these pictures a couple days after they got the new order in, and when I went back a couple weeks later, it was nowhere to be found, which makes me 1) glad I took the picture on the first visit and 2) suspect that WCW has a shiny new Alocasia melo at home now. I wasn't especially tempted by this either, having heard enough stories about indoor Alocasia catastrophe to fill a book, and anyway if I were going to throw away money on an Alocasia from this last order of theirs, it would be 'Frydek.'

Surprisingly, I've mentioned 'Frydek' in three posts now without ever having posted a picture of it. I haven't even taken any pictures of 'Frydek.' I will try to remedy this the next time I get out there.