Episode 147: identifying houseplants
Transcript
Episode 147
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Jane: Hello and welcome to On The Ledge podcast episode 147 and it's a mystery, a plant mystery. I'm your host Jane Perrone and we're talking identifying plants. If you've ever been kept up at night, wondering what on earth that plant the came with the label only marked "foliage plant" is, then join the club! We've all been there. This week we're going to try to untangle some of the issues around plant identification with the help of an expert. Jaco Nel is one of the fleet of experts who help to identify plants sent into the SmartPlant identification app. So we ask him to reveal his plant identification secrets and set him a challenge which turns out to be a bit of a doozy, actually.
I got an email this week which constituted the only feedback I've had of the negative kind, about my discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement in a recent episode and I wanted to just bring you a little bit of my response to this listener so that you can understand, perhaps, if you've felt uncomfortable with what I've said, this will help you to understand where I'm coming from. The listener has basically argued that they're confronted with politics everywhere they turn, from news, TV shows, sport, at work and so the podcast was an escape. They're not sure what BLM has to do with plants and apparently this has ruined the podcast for them. So this was my response:
"Thanks for your email. I'm truly disappointed to know you feel that On The Ledge has been ruined for you by a short segment amid dozens of hours of audio and more than 140 episodes. Here's the thing though, plants are political, the battles that have raged in order to produce the coffee in your cup or the chocolate bar in your lunch box are testament to that. Houseplants are political too, from the Victorian plant hunters fanning out across the globe to "discover" species, to the poachers still tearing succulents out of the ground in South Africa and Venus Fly Traps from the swamps of the Carolinas. To deny that would, to borrow a metaphor I've used on the podcast before, be looking at the world through glasses fogged by ignorance. It's my mission to try and understand and explain all facets of houseplants, that includes addressing why black people are under-represented in horticulture and doing my best to help change that. I hope I don't lose you as a listener and you'll be able to come on this journey of discovery with me. It may not always be comfortable to hear, but it always be fascinating. Regards, Jane."
I really mean that. I hope any listener who feels uncomfortable with discussions of race in the context of gardening and plants will hang around because the only way we're going to change things is by communicating with each other and learning from each other. The more you hear from a diverse as possible set of people when it comes to houseplants, then the better your education and roundedness will become. So, keep listening, please, and let's go on a journey together.
In other news, Eliza, became a Ledge-end this week, pledging $5 a month to support On The Ledge, and Mary donated by ko-fi.com and you can find out more about how to support the show by visiting the show notes at janeperrone.com
An update on Plant Passports. If you're in the UK and you've been following this debate, or you listened to my Nicola Spence episode a few months back, about the British Government's change in rules which basically meant that anybody who is selling plants was going to have to register to issue Plant Passports, you'll be interested to know I was given a phone call by my local plant inspector recently and she told me that, basically, I've been de-registered because the rules have changed. They've decided that hobbyists, those not making a profit from selling plants, no longer need to be registered, but I will update the Plant Passport episode's show notes to this effect and I will put any links that I find that confirm this into those notes because, obviously, this is a change that could affect quite a few of you and hopefully in a good way, in that you don't have to worry about Plant Passports or shelling out for annual inspections.
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Jane: In a world where information is available at the tip of our fingers, it's surprising, perhaps, that we can struggle to identify a houseplant but, yes, it still happens. Whether you've picked something up in a sale and it's just had a rather cryptic label on it, or perhaps no label at all, or you've been handed a plant by a relative or a friend, or picked something up at a swap and you just don't know what it is. So, where do you start? Well, I always think with plant identification, it's a bit like a giant maze, there may be several paths to reaching your destination - the name of the plant, obviously - and there are different ways of getting there, you've just got to find out the one that works for you. Oftentimes, when the topic of plant identification comes up, people immediately comment when I ask for an ID on social media and say: "Oh, have you tried this app or that app? Have you tried Google Lens?" That always slightly makes me feel uncomfortable and here's why.
I think these apps are absolutely brilliant, things like Google Lens are brilliant. I cannot tell you how it exciting it was when my son was doing a survey of the spiders in our house and we pointed Google Lens at a spider on the ceiling and it immediately identified it, I hope correctly, as a particular species. It was miraculous. But when I've tested these apps myself, I'm talking about the apps that use some form of AI to identify a plant, or indeed anything else, it's sometimes been disappointing because I've tested out the app on a plant that I know very well the name of and it hasn't always been correct. Oftentimes it is, which is remarkable, but you have to be aware it's not always going to send you in the right direction.
In fact, I'm going to do a bit of a live experiment here on On The Ledge. I've got my smartphone here and I'm going to have a go with Google Lens to identify a plant that's here on my windowsill, to see if Google Lens can identify it. I'm just reaching round to get the camera on the plant. The light isn't great, which doesn't help. Let's see if we can put a bit more light there. There we go. Google Lens is telling me that it's Hoya Carnosa, Peperomia obtusifolia or just generally a Hoya. It is in fact a Hoya Australis Lisa, so not bad. It took me to roughly the right direction. I'm going to try one more that's on my windowsill here. It is a pretty distinctive plant. Okay, this has actually been identified as either a Swiss Cheese plant, a Philodendron, or a Rhaphidophora, and I see where it's coming from. It is in fact a Chrysocardium, the Fern Leaf cactus. So Google Lens was confused by the shape of the plant and couldn't quite identify it. As I say, it's definitely worth having a go with some of these apps. I think the problem is, though, it can shortcut our own eyes and their power to identify things.
Coming up in the second half of the show, I'm going to be talking to Jaco Nel, who works for SmartPlant, which is an app that uses actual human being experts to identify plants sent in by the app users. Obviously, that's offering a completely different level of expertise. A human brain is looking at the photo and interpreting it. But what if you don't want to sign up for an app? You can send the pictures to me and I will do my best to identify things and there are many forums online where you can post pictures and people will try to identify your plant. Just beware the first person who comments very confidently about your plant, oftentimes that's not correct, so do wait for the wisdom of the crowds to weigh in before you take any ID as being correct. Say you want to have a go at doing it yourself? Where do you begin? As ever, I'm going to quote Dr Hessayon and there's a book that he put out in '85 and it's called The Indoor Plant Spotter and it's pretty much a re-tread of the House Plant Expert, but there's one thing in here which is rather useful and it's the way that the plants are arranged and particularly there's a key to the houseplant groups at the front. This relates to the different sections of the book. So I've got another plant here which I'm going to do a little experiment on, to see whether I can correctly identify it from using this special key. It's a bit like when you read a woman's magazine and it'll have a quiz: "Are you an outgoing person? Are you an extrovert or an introvert?" And you have to answer various questions and find out the answer. Well, I'm hoping that this will be a little bit more informative than those quizzes ever were.
So let's start. Start here. Does the plant bear distinct spines or bristles on its stem? Looking at it, no spines or bristles. If I'd have said yes that would have taken me to a few pages of spiny stemmed plants which are obviously mainly cacti and some other things in there as well, some Euphorbias and so on, but that's not where I'm going today. So I'm going to look down and see: Is the plant covered with dense hair? Not dense hair, no. Are the leaves swollen and fused, making the plants look like small stones? You can see where he's going with that one, can't you? No, it's not Lithops. Is the plant grown mainly for its decorative leaves and/or stems? Well, currently this plant isn't in flower but I happen to know that it does flower, so I'm going to say no. Is the plant mainly grown for its decorative fruits? No. Do the flower-bearing stems trail over the side of the pot? No. Do the stems of the adult plant have to be supported by canes or wires? No. Are you guessing what this is yet? Any guesses gratefully received. Are the flowers white or cream? No. That would have taken me to white flowering plants but I'm going to go along and there's an option for blue flowering plants. Yes. I'm going to go through the blue flowering plants and this has now narrowed it down to not very many pages which I can glance through in the hope of finding my plant. Let's have a look.
Well, actually, I guess I was slightly incorrect to say the flowers were blue. Actually, the flowers are - what should I have picked instead? Let's see if I can find the actual plant in here. I probably should have gone for multi-coloured flowers. The plant is a Saintpaulia, an African Violet, and I think I probably went slightly wrong there. African Violets were listed under multi-coloured flowers, but you get the idea. This book does give you a bit of a checklist to go through in order to try to get you to narrow down the kind of plant you have. You don't really need this book in order to do that because you can pretty much work it out for yourself. There's rosette plants, bushy plants, spear-leaved plants, grassy-leaved plants. There's various categories that you can probably work out for yourself, in terms of the narrowing down of the species. It is really worth, if you can get hold of some houseplant books, having a flick through. I know it's tempting to go online but oftentimes, when you've got a physical book in your hand and you can flick through the pages, it's easier to actually focus down on what you're looking for. I'll put a link to this Indoor Plant Spotter book into the show notes, in case you're interested in having a look. If you've already got a Hessayon houseplant book, the pictures and the material and the info is largely the same. It's down to how it's arranged and this little chart at the front. If you're a Hessayon completist like me, you probably want to get your hands on that book.
One of the other things you can do when you're trying to ID a plant, is consider plant families. Now, if you remember back to the botanical Latin episode, most plant names come in the form of a species and a genus, and a genus is like your surname and the species is like your first name. The family level is one level above genus, so one level above Perrone, I'm not sure how you'd describe that. There are about 600 different plant families in the plant kingdom and quite a few of them are known as containing quite a few houseplant species. When you're thinking about plants, it is worth thinking in terms of family when you're trying to identify a plant, just narrowing down what plant family that your plant might belong to. I'm just going to go through a few of the plant families, just to give you an idea of some of these groupings because once you do know that your plant is in the Araliaceae group, or the Saxifraga group, or theMint group, this will just help you to narrow down and look more closely at those particular families, and the genera within those families, as you narrow down your options. So one of the most well-known families is the Aroid family, the Araceae. They're also sometimes known as the Arum familyand if you ever come across a plant that's got a flower that looks like a Peace Lily flower, so you've got a central inflorescence, or spike, which has got lots of tiny, tiny, tiny flowers all over it, they're called a spadix. Oftentimes, that will be wrapped around with a cloak-like bract - again, think of the Peace Lily. This is a good indication that this plant comes from the Araceae family and this family is home to many of our favourites, like the genus Monstera, the genus Philodendron, plus also Anthurium, Zamioculcas and Dieffenbachia. So lots of plants that we know and love in that family.
I think I've spoken before about the fact that the members of the mint, or dead-nettle, or sage family, Lamiaceae, have got, oftentimes, the plants in this species, not quite all, but most of them, have got square stems. So, if you have a finger on the stem, and feel the stem of a basil or a sage or a mint, you'll feel that the stem has distinct right angles to it. It is really square shaped. So if you feel a square-shaped stem, that's a really good indication the plant is member of the Lamiaceae family, which has more than 200 genera, including Solenostemon, or the Coleus family as we know and loads of the windowsill herbs you might be growing, such as sages and basils and so on. The other thing that's really distinctive about this family is the fact that the flowers, if you look closely, you'll see that the petals are kind of melded together into an upper lip and a lower lip. One of the other names for this plant family is Labiacea. I'll leave you to work out the reference there! This is a big family of lots of plants and a fair few houseplants in it. That's another one to bear in mind.
Then there's the Araliaceae, the Aralia family. Around 55 genera in this one and this includes things like, Hedera, the Ivy, Schefflera - the Umbrella Tree. These are often woody plants. You might also see this family known as the Ginsengfamily. Most of the species come from South East Asia and the tropical parts of the Americas, so from tropical parts of the world. Another plant that's in this family is Fatsia japonica, that wonderful False Castor Oil plant, which looks so glossy and wonderful and has the rather fancy cultivar, Spiders Web, with its cream splashed variegation.
A couple more to mention. There's the Euphorbias, or the spurges, Euphorbiaceae. More than 200 genera in this family, so it's huge and there's quite a lot of taxonomic change going on all the time with this group, so it's a bit tricky, but there are loads of plants that are grown as houseplants and indeed garden plants in this family. One of the things that unifies many of these plants is they do give off a milky sap when the stem is broken, or the leaf is broken, and this is an irritant and toxic so you don't want to get it on your skin. So if you see a plant and it has some milky sap on it, it's a fairly good bet that it might be in the Euphorbia family. Oftentimes the succulent Euphorbias are mistaken for cacti, but they're not cacti. It's a case of convergent evolution, where two different evolutionary journeys have been happening simultaneously to different plants in different parts of the world. So we do have Euphorbias that are often mistaken for cacti, like the African Milk Tree Euphorbia trigona. Of course, the other plant that's in this family is Euphorbia pulcherrima, the ever so popular Poinsettia. As you know, not one of my favourites, but I had to give it a mention as it's such a well-known plant.
Then there's Commelinaceae, the Spiderwort family and this contains the all the Tradescantia group and Cyanotis genus. Loads of plants in there that are grown as houseplants. There's a few families. There are loads more. If you want to get further into this, then do have a look online. There's lots of websites, including Wikipedia, that have got extensive lists of different plant families and the more you study them, the more you will understand how to identify plants in their particular family.
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Jane: If you've ever wondered about the mind palace that is your brain, trying to locate a vital piece of information - that password for the little used app you now desperately need for work, or the date of your daughter's next piano lesson, say - you'll have a tiny bit of insight about what it feels like to be Jaco Nel. He works for the app SmartPlant, identifying plants from photos sent in by the app's users. I spoke to him to get an idea of what's involved in identifying a plant and I challenged him to do a live plant ID of a mystery set of foliage sent in by a listener to this show. Let me tell you, the job is not as easy as you may think as the plant ID challenge indicates. Do visit the show notes on janeperrone.com while you're listening, if you want to have a look at the mystery plant and try to ID it yourself.
Jane: Thank you very much for joining me, Jaco. I'm in awe of your role working for SmartPlant, helping the world identify plants with a particular focus on indoor plants. Are there any plants, particularly indoor plants, that you just see over and over again until you want to scream?
Jaco: Scream? No. The really interesting thing is that they do come in waves and you can almost set your seasonal clock by some plants. With indoor plants, it's mostly what is currently being sold in the nurseries. It's very interesting. You can see how the trends in the trade develop by what it is coming in. What comes through regularly, Dieffenbachia, is one we see often and in various forms. I know that Aglaonema - but I know some people call it Aglaonema. The common name for it is Chinese Greens - that comes through quite a lot. When I studied horticulture, it used to be a very small group of select plants. Silver Queen was one of the cultivars, Robellini was one of the others. Now there's Cyan / Pink Aurora, there's all kinds of new colours available, so that comes through quite a lot also. Spathiphyllum is another, and Spathis is an interesting one. That's not one people actually ask the name of when they've bought it. That's the one that they ask the name of when things start going wrong. Then they want to know what it is and what they should do to fix it, that kind of thing.
Jane: I guess the nurseries are doing you a favour in sending you work by just putting "foliage plant" on the label, rather than anything more accurate about the name of the plant because so many plants you buy do come with very limited information, don't they? Are there any indoor plants or groups of indoor plants that are particularly hard to pin down, that your heart sinks when you see an ID come in that you need to do?
Jaco: Yes and no. The yes is for cultivar status because there's so many new cultivars being released regularly. With the new cultivars that become available in the marketplace, the sad thing is that there's very little information because the growers are protecting their breeders' rights. They don't want to tell you who the two parent species that were involved in making this union. They don't want to tell you if it's a spore or a mutation. You can understand it. You can understand that they probably either don't know, they found it somewhere from another grower who bought it and developed it into a product, or they are actively doing their own hybridisation programme or selection programme and that's costly and you can understand that they protect that. For me, as a plant geek, I find that frustrating. I very often go on to the internet and go and search for the information and in terms of plants coming in with requests of what it is, difficult ones, I found in the beginning Peperomia to be a very interesting one because the information was so lacking. Of course, I don't have an entire plant library at my home where I work. So you inevitably go online and start looking and the interesting thing is it's very easy to quickly decide the family then hone in on to the genus and then you start looking for species or cultivar, but if you have the family and the genus you are more than 50% there, knowing where to go. If I can draw that back to the photographs you've sent me to have a look at, it's definitely this is a plant that belongs to the Spiderwort.
Jane: I've been a bit mean to you, haven't I? I've asked you to do a live identification of a plant that's been sent in by a listener. Her name is Rosika and she's got this plant which she is wanting to identify and she's in New York State and she's an ICU nurse, so I guess she's pretty busy right now, but she's got this plant and wants an ID because she got it in a plant swap and I guess that's often how this can happen. So you've narrowed it down to a Spiderwort. What's telling you that it's in that particularly category?
Jaco: It's the way that it grows, its opposite leaves. It's the way the base of the leaf hugs the stem. There's also very fine, filamentous hairs all along the edge of the leaf and the leaf is lanceolate. The genus, I know where to go and look for it and this is where the process will start, looking for the answers. I know that we're looking at the Tradescantiafamily, the broader family, a Monocotyledon. The first you thing you look at, is it a Monocot or is it a Dicotyledon, and those are one-seed, lobed or two-seed, lobed plants in layman's terms. This is a Monocot and I go, order, Commelinus, and them family Commelinaceae. Then you start looking for where we should look for the specifics of this plant - always difficult stuff that actually trips you up. I'm wondering if this is not a possibility in this instance. I'm having a look at Dichorisandra, which is a Blue Ginger, but I don't think this is Blue Ginger.
Jane: I'm at the same stage as you, I came to the same conclusions as you - a Spiderwort of some kind and then I'm not quite sure where to take it after that. I'm just looking at the email to see if there's any more information in here that might help us. She got it from a swap and it was a cutting from a temple somewhere in South East Asia, which is not particularly helpful, I guess, in terms of there are so many plants which are naturalised all over the world but also it's not helping in that we can't see the habit because it's so small, so it could be trailing but it's just going up at the moment.
Jaco: It's still very young and this is interesting, and the difficulty is if you get very young plants, or plants that are growing atypically because they're not in the correct light, then it becomes really, really interesting and that's where experience is absolutely essential - that you know that certain plants will react in a certain way. There's another possibility that I want to explore and that is Spiral Ginger, but there is no spiral growth on the foliage. For me, that could be a Spiral Ginger, actually.
Jane: That's thrown another thought into it. I'm wondering if this is going to be one of these ones where, this once happened to me, I woke up in the middle of the night and jumped out of bed when I suddenly remembered the name of a plant that somebody had sent me a picture of to identify!
Jaco: I'm so pleased to hear you say that because I always think to myself "I'm the numpty here!" because I wake up in the middle of the night and go: "That's where I need to have a look!"
Jane: The plant where that happened for me, was the Monkey Plant, Ruellia makoyana. Actually, that might not be the current species, but that's what they used to be called, anyway. It's a plant that I recalled from my past but it was so deep in my brain and somebody sent me this picture and I was looking through trying to think: "What is that? What is it?". Then it came to me in the night. My husband, I'm sure, was in despair at me leaping up suddenly and going: "I know what it is!". It can take you a while to access the information deep in your brain, can't it?
Jaco: Absolutely, it depends on how tired the hamster is in finding that information in your hard drive. It's quite interesting, living with people who aren't plant geeks - they don't understand it. I'll never forget, many years ago, I went for a hike in the Kruger National Park in Southern Africa with a bunch of twitchers, birdwatchers, and the funniest thing was there were one or two people that were plant watchers and the rest were all birdwatchers. So you had five or six people walking around looking into the trees and falling over everything and two people walking around with their heads down not seeing a single bird but looking at everything on the ground, I found a lot of humour in that. I found it very, very funny that we actually had become so enamoured with something so specific. I still think this is a Spiderwort. It's not a Spiral Ginger.
Jane: We might have to leave this with you for a total ID but what's interesting from you taking us through that, it's the things that you're looking at. You talked about leaf shape, I guess that's pretty vital, but also leaf position because those of us who look at plants closely, you do realise that leaves have many ways, different ways, of arranging themselves on a stem and that in itself can be really key. Also the shape of the stem. If I see a square stem I'm immediately thinking about the Lamiaceae family, the Mint family, and that's giving me a steer. So leaf shape, leaf position and also the nature of the leaves - are they hairy?
Jaco: And the leaf margin - is it serrated or is it entire? If it's serrated, what kind of serration does it have? We often get people posting very artistic photographs on the app trying to find out what the plant is, but the top and tail of the leaf is cut off, not seen. So you can't see how it terminates. Especially when you get to species level, that becomes really important. The petiole, you can't see, because they've removed that in framing the photograph very artistically and you can't see the leaf arrangement. Is it opposite/alternate? Is it in a roll? All that information tells a story that helps you to go to the right plant. While the experts work on experience, we also have the broader knowledge embedded in where to go and look in terms of the family, so that it's easy to figure out which species, which sub species, or which cultivar it belongs to. If there's any advice I can give people is do not try and send in artistic photographs to the app because that's not what you want. We're not going to give a scoring for the artistic value of the photograph, but we are going to be really pleased if you give us a photograph that includes the shape of the leaf, the margin of the leaf, the leaf arrangement, the petiole position, petiole insertion on to the stem, node detail, inter-node detail. As strange as this may seem, the way the leaf tapers at the tip and ends is also important. So all of that information, put together, helps each one of the experts to dive in and go and look for things and come up with an answer or an opinion of what they think the plant that has been sent in actually is. I think the other thing that people tend to forget when they send in photographs, is they send in a single photograph, a single angle, they don't consider the fact that the expert who is going to review it won't be able to pick it up, turn it around, look at it, touch it, feel it, smell if there's any essential oils coming off it. So you, as an app user, are at an advantage, in that you can see more, you can turn it around, you can consider various angles, you can really pull things apart and look at it, whereas the expert gets one photograph. You've spoilt me today with four photographs, but usually it's a single photograph and, as I say, very often with lots of cropping of tips and tails and very artistically framed. By the way, I've looked at this plant and I actually now think this is in fact a Blue Ginger, Dichorisandra thyrsiflora, and it's the right area of the world I think. No, actually, it's fascinating, Central South America, Atlantic Forest, it is certainly tropics. I first saw it flowering in Funchal, Madeira,and I'm now growing it in a pot just outside my door in the front garden for the first time. Last year, it spent a whole year in the greenhouse and it wasn't happy about that, but it's thriving in the front garden in this glorious summer we're having.
Jane: You've managed to figure it out! That's amazing. She's finding it very easy to look after. I guess it is a relation of the Tradescantia group?
Jaco: It is.
Jane: It's part of that same group. Nice and easy and it's great that this plant is growing well for her, so I'm really glad you've been able to identify that. Do you ever hit a complete dead end? What happens then?
Jaco: Of course. The interesting thing is, yes, all the experts have a certain level of expertise from experience and working with plants and having a lifetime of learning behind them. It's such a big science. There was a very particular one. It was a plant that somebody sent in. I've got a little crib sheet that I keep photographs and names of plants that I never knew, that I wanted to know and I'm just looking through that at the moment. It was a really interesting plant with the most amazing flowers. It stumped me, it took me nearly a year to find out what it was. That doesn't mean I sat on the ID for that long, I just left it open for somebody else to actually go and find it and identify it, one of the other experts. It was Podanthus ovatifolius and it grows in the Chelsea Physic Garden and it was initially incorrectly identified as Buddleja globosa and when you see the flowers you will see how it was easily misidentified. Quite interestingly, there was a nice interaction with experts on our Facebook group and we managed to whittle it down, find out where the photograph was taken, and then contacted the Chelsea Physic Garden and said: "What on earth is this? We've been through every possibility for this plant" and we managed to find out that it was Podanthus ovatifolius. A beautiful plant. It was one of those that stuck in the brain and I couldn't let it go. Every time I had a little time spare, I would go onto the internet and start looking. Very pleased. It's such a sense of achievement when you finally find the genus and species that it belongs to.
Jane: It really does make you feel good inside. I think that's the thing, you can build up your identification skills gradually and start learning about things like leaf shape and stem arrangement and different genera and that way, you build it up gradually. You can't be expected to know it all at once and I'm sure that there are elderly botanists who are still stumped by particular plants. Every day is a school day, right?
Jaco: For me, this is one of the real joys of my career, is that I studied horticulture and then I went into landscape architecture and what I'm doing at the moment, all of them have one thing in common and that is you never stop learning. With landscape architecture, you work with engineers and architects and urban designers - a whole bevy of specialists. With horticulture, it's constantly learning about plants. It never stops.
Jane: That's a brilliant thought to end on, Jaco. That's really great! May you continue to identify those gnarly, difficult plants for all of us getting stumped!
Jaco: It's a great pleasure. Thank you very much!
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Jane: Just when you thought we had the plant identification for Rosika absolutely licked, an email came into my inbox from Jaco with an update. He writes: "Had a good look again this morning. I think my original ID of Dichorisandra thyrsiflora had been too hasty. It lacks the fine hairs clearly visible in the photos. Since we spoke, other than Dichorisandra, I've also considered genera Celosia, Polia, and Floscopa within the larger family of Commelinaceae. Of these, each of the genera are possibilities, but I think the more likely genus being Floscopa. Without flowers, it'd be arrogant not to admit that more information, and preferably flowers, are needed to settle this one. Having said that, Floscopa seemed to fit the region where it is reported to have come from, has the basic leaf shape and arrangement and the fine hairs. And it, orrather Floscopa scandens, seems to be as happy growing in wet soils and pond or stream margins to the extent there are some webpages that even advise growing it in open fish tanks and as submerged fish tank plants. I think the jury is still out on this one. So, Rosika please do get in touch when your plant flowers. We would absolutely love to have some pictures of the flowers, so we can pin this species down, once and for all. I hope that's really highlighted the skill that goes into plant identification and, perhaps, whetted your appetite for doing a bit of plant ID work yourself. That's all for this week. I'll be back next Friday. Until then I hope your week is filled with good things and kind thoughts. Bye!
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Jane: The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll by The Joy Drops and Quasi Motion by Kevin Macleod. The ad music was by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra, with the tracks Whistling Rufus and Dill Pickles. All are licensed under Creative Commons. See janeperrone.com for details.
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If you’ve ever been flummoxed by a houseplant that came with a label marked simply ‘foliage’, this episode will help you start to figure out the name of your new addition. Plant expert Jaco Nel of app SmartPlant joins me to explain the clues he looks for when trying to name plants, and attempts a live plant identification.
Rosika’s mystery plant. Can you name it? (Click to enlarge the image).
Check the notes below as you listen…
This week’s guest, Jaco Nel, is one of the experts who identifies plants via photographs sent in to the plant app SmartPlant. He lives in southwest London where he loves growing many plants including Streptocarpus.
If you’re interested in learning more about plant families, start here.
The plant families containing many houseplant species mentioned in this episode are Araceae, Araliaceae, Lamiaceae, Commelinaceae and Euphorbiaceae.
The book I mention is The Indoor Plant Spotter by Dr DG Hessayon - it’s out of print but easy to find on secondhand book sites. I’ll put a pic of the houseplant key on Instagram.
The plant that woke me up in the middle of the night was Ruellia makoyana, the monkey plant.
Listener Rosika’s mystery plant is pictured right. Jaco thinks it’s either Dichorisandra thyrsiflora, Callisia fragrans, Floscopa scandens or Pollia japonica - but what do you think? I’m hoping Rosika comes back with a pic of some flowers soon so we can provide a definitive ID!
The mystery plant from the Chelsea Physic Garden was Podanthus ovatifolius. (It was mistaken for Buddleja globosa and you can see why!)
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CREDITS
This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops and Quasi Motion by Kevin Macleod. Ad music is Dill Pickles and Whistling Rufus, both by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra.
Logo design by Jacqueline Colley.