List: Houseplants Which Trail But (Mostly) Don't Climb

The line here is a bit arbitrary, but sometimes you want a plant that's going to just lay there, and sometimes you want a plant that's going to climb up things. This list is for the plants that are just going to lay there. A lot of these are used as hanging-basket plants.

A few of these plants will climb to some degree if they're being grown outside (some, like Ficus pumila, are downright obnoxious about it), but indoors, you generally have to provide them something to climb and then anchor the stems with some kind of plant tie at regular intervals, or make them some kind of constantly-moist support, or some other impractical thing like that. Most of the plants in this list won't climb particularly well even with assistance, and can be relied on not to get any crazy ideas about running themselves up your curtains. Your mileage may vary, of course.

This is an even less comprehensive list than usual, because the number of plants with this basic growth habit is practically never-ending. I'll add suggestions as people are moved to leave them in comments.

Note: this list was done by request for Joseph Tychonievitch of Greensparrow Gardens, who asked. I don't promise to take all list requests (some lists just can't be done as easily as others), and anybody who wants one is going to have to take a number and wait anyway, because Joseph asked for FOUR of them, but I'm more or less open to doing posts by request, in theory. Just so you're aware.

Aechynanthus speciosus, (goldfish plant) and other Aeschynanthus spp. (lipstick plant)

Cyanotis kewensis (teddy bear vine)

Dischidia ruscifolia (million hearts)

Epipremnum aureum 'Neon,' and other Epipremnum aureum cvv. (pothos)

Gynura aurantiaca (purple passion plant, purple passion vine)

Hedera canariensis 'Gloire de Marengo' (Algerian ivy)

Maranta leuconeura 'Marisela,' and other Maranta leuconeura cvv. (prayer plant)

Pellionia pulchra

Pilea depressa (baby toes)

Senecio rowleyanus (string of beads, string of pearls)
EDIT: Whoops. I published this without adding any commentary on the pictured plants.

I guess my three favorites from the above list are probably Aeschynanthus spp., Gynura aurantiaca, and Pellionia pulchra, with Cyanotis kewensis serving as first alternate.

This is partially process of elimination, because I've had moderately bad experiences with a lot of the other plants on the list, either from bugs (Maranta, Hedera), rot (Epipremnum), or decline from unknown causes (Pilea, Senecio). And I've never actually owned a Dischidia.

Not pictured:

Callisia fragrans (basket plant)
Ceropegia woodii (string of hearts)
Chlorophytum comosum (spider plant, airplane plant, mala madre)
Cissus rhombifolia (grape ivy; oakleaf ivy) (will climb a little)
Cissus rotundifolia (Peruvian grape ivy) (will climb a little)
Codonanthe spp.
Columnea cvv.
Crassula muscosa (= C. lycopodioides) (watch-chain crassula)
Davallia spp. (rabbit's-foot ferns)
Dischidia nummularia ("button orchid," says davesgarden.com, though it's not an orchid)
Episcia cvv. (flame violet)
Ficus pumila (climbing fig) (will climb a little)
Fittonia albivenis (nerve plant)
Hedera helix (English ivy) (will climb a little)
Hoya carnosa (will climb a little)
Hoya lacunosa (will climb a little)
Hoya kentiana (will climb a little)
Hoya kerrii (sweetheart hoya) (will climb a little)
Hoya pubicalyx (will climb a little)
Ludisia discolor (jewel orchid) (Also other "jewel orchids" like Goodyera, Anoectochilus, Macodes, etc., though those are a lot harder to find.)
Monstera adansonii (swiss cheese philodendron) (will climb a little)
Monstera deliciosa (split-leaf philodendron, swiss cheese philodendron) (will climb a little)
Nematanthus gregarius (guppy plant)
Neoregelia 'Fireball'
Philodendron gloriosum
Philodendron bipennifolium (horse-head philodendron) (will climb a little)
Philodendron erubescens 'Red Emerald' (will climb a little)
Philodendron hastatum (will climb a little)
Philodendron hederaceum (heart-leaf philodendron) (will climb a little)
Phlebodium aureum 'Mandianum' (bear's paw fern)
Pilea nummulariifolia (creeping charlie)
Plectranthus ciliatus
Plectranthus verticillatus (Swedish ivy)
Plectranthus oertendahlii
Polypodium formosanum 'Cristatum' (E.T. fern)
Pseudorhipsalis ramulosa
Rhipsalis spp. (mistletoe cactus)
Saxifraga stolonifera (strawberry begonia)
Schlumbergera truncata cvv. (holiday cactus, Thanksgiving cactus, Christmas cactus)
Scindapsus pictus (satin pothos) (will climb a little)
Scyphularia pycnocarpa (possum tail fern)
Sedum burrito (burro's tail)
Sedum morganianum (also burro's tail)
Senecio jacobsenii (trailing jade)
Senecio radicans (string of bananas)
Soleirolia soleirolii (baby tears)
A few cvv. of Solenostemon scutellarioides (coleus)
Stapelia spp. (carrion flower)
Stephanotis floribunda (Madagascar jasmine) (will climb a little)
Streptocarpus saxorum cvv. (streptocarpella)
Syngonium podophyllum (arrowhead vine) (will climb a little)
Syngonium wendlandii
Tolmiea menziesii (piggyback plant)
Tradescantia fluminensis
Tradescantia pallida (purple heart, purple queen)
Tradescantia sillamontana (kitten ears)
Tradescantia zebrina (wandering Jew)

Unfinished business: Euphorbia drupifera flowers

Last Tuesday, when I was watering, I noticed that the Euphorbia drupifera flowers were being interesting: they've sprouted little god-knows-whats out of their centers. Maybe anthers (they all look like they're tipped with little yellow dots of pollen, anyway). I really don't understand how Euphorbia flowers are constructed. I'm pretty sure the flowers have done this in years past, too, but for whatever reason, I didn't bother to get a close-up of the phenomenon. So now I have.


The actual point of this post, though, besides getting to show you the cool, super close-up picture above (and it blows up much bigger if opened in a separate window, just so you know), is to note that the flowers have a scent. It's really faint, so faint that I can't get a good handle on what it actually smells like: at various moments, my brain interpreted it as bleach, "hospital," oregano, sour-citrus, "chemical," "spice," and "clean." It was most insistent about "hospital" and oregano. I don't even know what "hospital" smells like, exactly.

The husband's less-talky nose said floral, shading into a sort of citrus. So we at least kind of overlap on citrus.

I know this is not much of a description. Or, maybe, I know this is too many descriptions. I would have liked to be able to be more precise about it, but the smell is right on the verge of not existing at all, so. I'll revise this post if I'm inspired with a perfect description at some point.

Site-related: Difficulty numbers

Back in November, I sat down in front of the computer with the difficulty-numbers spreadsheet and started anew, plugging in whatever numbers seemed appropriate without consulting the old numbers first. This took a stupidly long time and failed to accomplish anything meaningful: most of the new numbers came out pretty close to the old ones. However, in a few cases, the experiences I'd had with a plant since generating the old difficulty numbers meant that the new difficulty numbers were significantly different. So I've had vague plans to change the numbers over to the new ones for two and a half months now, and I've decided to do this today. The sidebar list has already been put into the new order; I'll be going into the profiles to change the numbers there over the next day or two. This is unlikely to affect you in any way whatsoever, though in theory if you click on the right profile at the right time, you might see no number at the top, or something like that.

I won't give you the full list of changes, since, as I said, most of them were pretty similar to the old numbers anyway (and in a handful of cases, they were exactly the same), but here are the biggest movers, and reasons, where applicable:

Went from easier to harder:

Clivia miniata 'Aztec Gold,' without flower.
Clivia miniata (3.2 to 4.4) -- I think the main change here has to do with the fairly extreme switch in care between summer and winter, though I also may have initially underestimated their capacity for getting bugs. (Mine don't have bugs, knock wood, but I've seen mealys on other people's Clivias often enough that I'm taking it more seriously as a risk.)


Dracaena fragrans 'Massangeana.'
Dracaena fragrans 'Massangeana' (1.2 to 2.6) -- still an easy plant, overall, but I've had a lot of weird little things happen that make me think I was overestimating it before. Growing tips have died and resprouted (a side effect, I think, of watering from overhead; they don't like to get water stuck inside the growing tip), sprouts from the side of a cane have suddenly blackened for no reason, that kind of thing.


Begonia rex-cultorum 'Harmony's Red Robin.'
Begonia rex-cultorum (8.0 to 9.6) -- subsequent bad work experiences, plus the realization that nobody else is that great with these either, leads to Begonia stealing the most-difficult spot away from Gardenia. Though I still like my 'Texas Coffee Star,' or whatever it is, and it seems not to hate me nearly as much as every other rex begonia I've ever met.


Ledebouria sp.
Ledebouria socialis (2.2 to 3.9) -- Had some watering problems last summer. I still haven't figured out whether I was watering too much or not enough, but whichever it was, they weren't happy about it. It probably didn't help that I'd divided my plant into three last spring.


Dracaena sanderiana.
Dracaena sanderiana (1.1 to 3.5) -- Part of this is sheer unreasoning hatred: I've never liked these. But I've also had some problems with a plant that used to belong to the husband, that I've taken over care of. Some of the growing tips are dying, the soil has springtails (or something), I've seen lots of other people's plants just up and die over nothing. They're not good long-term plants.


Aspidistra lurida 'Milky Way.'
Aspidistra lurida 'Milky Way' (1.1 to 4.8) -- I recently lost my third A. lurida, in the winter, to unclear cultural problems. I thought I had it figured out the first time, but then the second died. So then I bought a third one, and it stuck around for an admirably long time, but it's died too. AND I DO NOT KNOW WHY. So I hate this plant. No more Aspidistras, ever. Even A. elatior, which I've never even tried before. Just because it's related.

Went from harder to easier:

Cissus quadrangularis.
Cissus quadrangularis (2.4 to 1.2) -- I don't actually know what numbers changed here to make this jump happen.


Pilea cadierei.
Pilea cadierei (6.0 to 4.8) -- Though still more difficult than your average plant (mostly because it needs more warmth and humidity than most), I think I was overcautious when I came up with the original numbers. It doesn't appear to have particularly unreasonable humidity requirements, and it's been growing fine in the basement all winter, so temperature isn't that big of a deal either.


Alworthia 'Black Gem.'
Alworthia 'Black Gem' (3.3 to 1.8) -- I have yet to have a problem with these. It's likely I was being more skittish about overwatering than has proven to be the case. (Though some of my success there may be because I have a really lean soil mix; I'm not sure if I'd be as confident if I were using Miracle Gro or something.)


Senecio macroglossus.
Senecio macroglossus (5.4 to 3.9) -- I still don't especially like the plant, but I suspect the watering problems I talked about in the original profile were partly a matter of bad soil and overpotting. I probably also wasn't giving the plant enough light, then. They seem fairly resilient, if still a little more difficult than the average houseplant.


Homalomena 'Emerald Gem.'
Homalomena 'Emerald Gem' (5.6 to 3.8) -- We've reached some sort of agreement, is all I can say. It's possible, again, that overpotting was part of the problem originally; it always threw leaves after I watered, and then stayed wet for a long time. Lately, though, it's been getting much better about this. It wilts slightly when it needs water, I give it water, and then it sends up three new leaves in quick succession. It still doesn't look as good as it did when I bought it: by this point, the stems are getting kind of leggy, and all the leaves are pointing straight up, because I have it under a fluorescent light and it doesn't really get any light from the side. But the new leaves are large and increasingly abundant, and there are even some new suckers. So we've turned a corner.


Synadenium grantii.
Synadenium grantii (3.5 to 1.7) -- Aside from some understandable trauma very recently (I transplanted some cuttings to a large pot, and they dropped leaves), and occasional dropped leaves to let me know I waited too long to water, I've never seen Synadenium grantii have a problem with anything. Not sure how it got the 3.5 rating to begin with, but I think 1.7 is about right.


Hylocereus sp.
Hylocereus undatus (3.1 to 1.2) -- It's a fugly, fugly plant, even when it's more or less healthy (and mine actually is a little etiolated, which doesn't make it prettier), but it's not hard to grow. I actually kind of wish it were a little harder to grow, so I had more of an excuse for the extreme hideousness.

Saturday morning Nina picture

In case you've wondered: the reason why I don't take pictures of Nina sitting on any of the other plants, the reason why it's the Stromanthe every time, is because the other plants have mostly ceased existing. The Vriesea remains, and you can usually see it in the background of the Stromanthe pictures. The Impatiens is still there, too, though I've had to cut it back a few times, so it comes and goes.

Everything else is either entirely gone or only technically present. The Peperomia caperata got too wet, plus shaded out by the Stromanthe. The Cryptanthus have, for the most part, been dug up before they rooted -- they're still in there, but they move around a lot. I'm not sure if Nina is responsible, or if it's the crickets. Or both. The Podocarpus was nibbled by crickets, shaded out by the Stromanthe, and then got alternately drowned and parched: I don't know if it's still technically alive or not, but I haven't taken it out yet. The Pilea depressa never really took off like it was supposed to, though bits and pieces survive. I've tried adding new stuff a few times, but so far the only one that has even maybe worked is a Saxifraga stolonifera, which I haven't even been able to get all of those to work out.

So I guess it's a kind of rough neighborhood for plants.

There's been talk of using the tax refund to get Nina a new, larger home (perhaps Felipe could even join her!). Still just talk at the moment, as I haven't priced any and don't know how much money will end up having to go where. But it's under consideration. And it would be an excuse for new plant-shopping.

Pretty picture: Duranta sp.

This picture is from the ex-job in I think October. We've seen Duranta once before here at PATSP, but I didn't know that's what it was then.

The first time around, what interested me about the plant was that the flowers smelled really good (like sugar cookies). I remember checking for a smell on this occasion, and being disappointed that there wasn't really any. If I remember correctly, they had it tagged as D. repens, but I think it's probably D. erecta.

My former employer still has the plant there as of last Saturday, but it's not flowering anymore, so it's not very likely to sell. I have no strong feelings about this either way. No idea what they're like as houseplants.

Random plant event (?): Blue Begonia?

Don't get all excited. It's not actually a blue Begonia in the way you're thinking. Though that would be cool, and I encourage somebody to create one like what you're thinking someday.

What it is is, I took some pictures of my 'Coffee Texas Star' (which might also be several other things, including 'Gladys Meyer:' I've run into at least four differently-named Begonia rex-cultorum cultivars that all look more or less exactly like my plant.) on Tuesday for the "yearbook." Because I never know how the light is until after I've uploaded the photos, I took some pictures with the flash, and some without. And in every single one of the photos with the flash, I got blue iridescence off of some of the leaves, particularly the leaves that were most directly facing the camera. Or maybe it's more turquoise than blue --


See? Above, with the flash; below, without:


And a close-up of the blue part, just for shiggles:


So I was thinking, wow, that's weird, I wonder why I've noticed that before. Maybe it's something specific to the flash on this camera. So I got a flashlight, and shined¹ it at the plant, and when the beam hit the leaf more or less perpendicular, I did see a little bit of turquoise bounced back at me, so long as my eye was more or less right behind the flashlight. Which looked approximately like the above picture.

So I guess it's a real thing. What does it signify? How does it help the plant? Or does it help? What structure or structures within the leaf are responsible? Do all Begonias do this? What does it all meeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaan?

I have no idea. But it happened. You know the blog's title.

-

¹ I know. It sounds wrong to me too. But the internet says that if there's a direct object, "shined" is correct, and without it, it's "shone." So I shined the light on the Begonia, but yesterday the sun shone. This sounds really stupid and wrong to me either way, and I'm actually more, instead of less, confused by the direct object thing and should probably have rephrased the sentence as, "So I got a flashlight, turned it on, and aimed it at the plant," but that sounds kind of clunky too. So I think I'm just going to swear off flashlight-related writing after this post.

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

Some very nice stuff from this round. I think you'll be pleased.

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

Heliconia psittacorum 'Bright Lights.' It's not grown for the colorful leaves, obviously.


Breynia discticha 'Roseo-Picta.' Difficult to photograph, because the leaves are very small (about an inch, inch and a half long and wide -- roughly 2.5-4 cm). Not as uninteresting as it might have been, I suppose.


Alocasia 'Frydek.' I think the message here is "Left Turn Only."


Philodendron 'Congo Rojo.' There seem to be only so many ways to vein a Philodendron; almost all of them look like this to some degree or another, at the vein level. The spots are most likely areas where the developing leaf was damaged before it hit maturity; such spots are permanent, kinda unsightly, and occasionally lead customers to completely lose their shit. But it's nearly impossible to prevent spots from happening, especially if you're producing them on a wholesale kind of scale.


Tradescantia zebrina. Well, the color is nice, even if it's not otherwise terribly interesting.


Syngonium podophyllum, didn't catch the entire cultivar name but it involved the word 'Gold.' There's a 'Gold Allusion' out there, but the pictures I found for it were not particularly golden, nor did they look much like the plant in question.

Codiaeum variegatum NOID. Should it surprise me that, as much as I like taking pictures of croton leaves, I never ever ever have even a moment of wanting to own one again? I mean, it's like, never. I don't care about having one. But I guess I want others to have them, so I can take pictures. This seems weird.


Stromanthe sanguinea 'Triostar.' This reminds me of something non-plant-related, but I can't think of what. I want to say either fabric or ice cream, but I'm not a big noticer of fabric, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen ice cream that looked like this, so I have not idea where that feeling is coming from.


Codiaeum variegatum NOID. This picture is kind of interesting as a negative: it winds up looking a bit like white "clouds" on a blue "sky."


Maranta leuconeura erythroneura. Just . . . perfect, if I do say so myself.

Weather!

Hey, remember that blizzard, the one that got me all freaked out because the plant room got cold, but then it turned out not to be much of a blizzard at all and I was kind of disappointed?

I think I've been adequately compensated for that now.

The view southeast from the front door.
Three days ago or so, the forecast was for an inch of snow on Monday, followed by some wind Tuesday. This was mainly of interest to me because it was supposed to get really cold at the same time -- down below zero again -- which we'd been getting kind of a break from that over the last week or two. So that was kind of unpleasant. But still -- an inch of snow. How bad could it be?

And then on Sunday they changed the forecast to two inches of snow, but that's hard to get terribly excited about too. So then Monday arrived.

Outside my office window, the neighbors have parked a lawnmower. It's maybe thirty or forty feet from where I'm sitting. Black and red, on a snow-white background. It's as full-daylight as you can get on a totally overcast day. And I have been intermittently unable to see the lawnmower.

Due east from the front door. (I was going to take a west-facing picture of the back yard, but my body refused to go through the door when I opened it, so I settled.)
So this is kind of awesome.

I'm still not nuts about the plunging temperatures, but this is a totally acceptable blizzard. Four out of five stars. (I'm withholding the fifth star because I can, after all, still see the lawnmower. And also two inches of snow is not very much. For five stars, you need at least 12 inches / 30.5 cm of snow.)