Episode 208: houseplants of the past
Theodosia Burr Shepherd with her tree begonias. Photograph: Biodiveristy Heritage Library on Flickr.
Transcript
Episode 208
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Jane: I'm back and the question is... Do I remember how to make a podcast after such a long break? I hope the answer is "Yes!". Welcome to On The Ledge podcast, episode 208. Just in case you're new around here, my name's Jane Perrone and this is On The Ledge podcast; the podcast for people who are besotted with houseplants.
Happy New Year! Am I still allowed to say that in February? Well, it's the first time you've heard me in 2022, so I think I am. Apologies if I sound a little bit hoarse this week. I am recovering from a thing called Covid. Heard of it!? You probably have. It finally got me; the third time we've had Covid in the house, but the first time that I've got infected. So I'm glad to say that I wasn't too badly affected, having been vaccinated and boosted. I had a few days where I wasn't feeling that chipper and my husband caught it as well, but it's almost over and all I can say is thank god for science because it would have been so much worse if we hadn't had those vaccinations.
The other massive, humongous, enormous, ginormous news is that I have finished the manuscript for my book, "Legends of the Leaf"! Sorry - I'm just pausing for a slow power grab! It's probably not that great for a podcast, where you can't see me, but anyway, I'm very happy to have the manuscript done! I don't have a date yet, for it to come out - a publication date, that's the right word for it! As soon as I do have one, I will be sharing that with you and thank you to all of you who have pledged recently and all of you who pledged right back at the start. I just got a pledge from somebody called Crystal Ball and quite frankly it has made my day. Crystal, I really hope that's your real name because, wow, that would be the best name ever! I am at 121%, as I speak. If I get to 125%, then I'm going to unleash a special, private author video, just for those who have pre-ordered their copy. So keep pledging, keep pre-ordering and tell your friends and, hopefully, we'll get that rolling before too long!
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Jane: In this episode of the show, it's a bit of a housekeeping, "Hello, I'm back!" kind of episode. I'm going to talk about some of the things that have happened to my plants while I've been writing this book and what I'm doing about it. I'm also going to tell you about some of the plant oddities and houseplants that you should have heard of, probably haven't, that I found out about while researching "Legends of the Leaf". I'll be answering a question about a reverted Spider Plant, plus we'll also be hearing from listener, Mark, in a welcome return of Meet The Listener.
For those of you who are Patreon subscribers, hopefully my Patreon Extra Leaf episodes have been keeping you going during the break, unless you've listened to them all already, of course. If you are a Patreon subscriber, just to let you know, you will have been charged for January, if you pay monthly and I have now paused payment for February. So, if you pay monthly for Patreon, you'll find there'll be no payment in February and payment will restart in March, so that's to make up for the fact that you had no extra content in January. If you pay annually, all that happens is that an extra month is added on to your time, so you also get an extra month. I hope that all makes sense. If not, drop me a line. I'm always happy to try to help. I know the Patreon website can sometimes be a bit cryptic, so please drop me a line if you're having any problems with Patreon and I'll try to sort that out for you. Extra Leaf episodes will be restarting in the next couple of weeks, so look out for those!
Thank you to those of you who've joined Patreon while I've been on a pause. We've got Benjamin, Sarah and Gillian, who've all become Crazy Plant People. Sandra, Colleen, Andrew, Jesse, Sophie and Laura have all become Ledge-ends. Kathy and Amanda have upgraded from Crazy Plant Person to Ledge-end. Jane has upgraded from Ledge-end to Superfan and Darren has become a Superfan, so welcome to all of you! Thanks, also, to Ian, who left a donation on ko-fi.com. If you don't want to commit to a regular payment, then ko-fi is the way to go. All the details are in my show notes at janeperrone.com if you'd like to find out more about any of those things.
There's also been a lovely bit of reviewing going on while I've been on a pause. PlantMomPhD and Lillian and Asobering all left very, very kind reviews and Momage also left a delightful review in Canada, so thank you to all of those people. It really does give me a boost when I read those reviews, so keep them coming!
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Jane: Let's kick things off with Question of the Week and this one comes from Quinn, in Ohio. Quinn had a question about a Peperomia ID, which I dealt with, but the one I want to deal with in this episode is a question about a Spider Plant, our old friend Chlorophytum comosum. There's a whole chapter on this plant in "Legends of the Leaf", just to say. I've been doing quite a bit of research into it of late. Quinn's question is about a variegated Spider Plant that has started to put out all green babies and the mother plant's leaves are turning green as well. So this is one of the Spider Plants with the green line down the centre with white lines on either side, so that is known as Chlorophytum comosum variegatum. The other one that you mainly see, is vitatum, which has the cream line down the centre with green margins.
Now, in the wild, Chlorophytum comosum has an indigenous range which runs across tropical Africa. There are basically three different varieties of Chlorophytum comosum which have been found in the wild through DNA analysis. Basically, scientists don't really like calling this a species. They like to call it a species complex, which means the DNA is really confusing and there are various ancestral lines running through it. The variety that we think that most of our houseplants come from, is Chlorophytum comosum, variety comosum, but it's worth saying that none of the three generally has variegated leaves. They have plain green leaves, almost always, when they're found in their indigenous environment. Whereas as houseplants, of course, the plain green Chlorophytum comosum is relatively rare. You don't see as many of those as you do of the two main, variegated varieties vitatumand variegatum, plus the other varieties and cultivars that have sprung up over the years. So it's unusual if you do see a plain green Spider Plant.
So why has Quinn's plant reverted? Quinn says this is a plant that's "been in his family for a long time", as is often the case with Spider Plants - they're quite often heirloom specimens. This one is one that came from family plants and is a baby of one of those plants that's been around. Why would it be reverting now though? Well, as is often the case, there are a few different possibilities here. It can be due to lack of light. Quinn, having described the setting for his plant, I am thinking that that is not the case because it's in a sunroom and it gets a good amount of light in there and it's in there with his mum's plant which hasn't reverted. It can also be caused by a nutrient shortage. It may be that it's got really, really pot-bound in the pot and there's just not much in the way of nutrients left in the soil, it needs repotting and feeding and that might send it back the other way. Sometimes with plants, these things just happen. There's a genetic change and we've got no cultural explanation for it. What I would say, is treat it as an experiment, see what happens, as you said, Quinn, try growing that plant so it produces babies and what will those babies look like? Many of the great discoveries of the houseplant world have been chance finds like that, so you never know what you're going to discover. You can try playing around with the environmental conditions for your plant to see if that does affect what's going on. It may just be that that particular Spider Plant wants to throw out a different spore, it might grow and have plain green leaves but have some other interesting features, maybe super-large, super small or particularly thin or wide leaves. So it's always worth keeping an eye on what's happening with these reversions, unless you really do want to keep the qualities of the existing plant, in which case, those kind of reverted babies can just be chopped up and put in the compost bin, if you really, really don't want to countenance the idea of a genetic change to your plant.
When I was writing the chapter on the Boston Fern, Nephrolepis exaltata, it really brought home to me how amazing it was that this whole series of sports of the Sword Fern, the plant that originally the Boston Fern came from, just came about through one chance find of a plant in a shipment by a chap called Fred C Becker. So these kind of discoveries are available to all of us and it's fascinating to see how these things progress. I'm sure lots of these sports and mutations are just not recognised at the time and therefore lost, so always keep an eye on your plants and see what's happening with them.
On a tangent to this, there was a piece that went through various UK newspapers in the last couple of weeks, talking about how super-rare plants were being sold at big box stores, like Aldi and B&Q, and that people were taking advantage of big shop chains not realising they had these expensive plants and selling them for small amounts of money. It was a weirdly distorted interpretation of the idea that you can go to a big box store and possibly see a variegated Monstera deliciosa there amongst the plain green ones and maybe grow that out. But it just shows people are always looking for a monetary advantage to something unusual but, for me, it's more about this is something new that nobody else has seen before. Of course, reverted green Spider Plants are not new, but you never know what else could be coming your way, Quinn, so continue to enjoy your Spider Plant!
The other amazing thing that I learned from writing "Legends of the Leaf", is that it's also known to some people as Goethe's plant because the legendary German poet, Goethe, who was a passionate amateur botanist, ended up getting hold of a plant back in 1827 and quickly fell in love with it and did lots of growing of it and spreading it around. There's more about that in the book but... Goethe and the Spider Plant. So if you're a fan of romantic writers and the Spider Plant, then you had a friend in the poet Goethe! Right, it's now time to hear from our listener this week and his name is Mark.
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Mark: Hi everyone, my name is Mark, I'm 21 years old and I come from Germany where I'm currently working as a life science laboratory technician in the food safety department.
Jane: When did you get into houseplants and why?
Mark: The main reason for my love of houseplants was a Prickly Pear Cactus, which my family gave me as a present when I was nine years old, about twelve years ago. This was also the beginning of my passion for cacti and succulents.
Jane: What's the latest addition to your houseplant collection?
Mark: The last cactus that found its way into my collection was an Echinocereus bristolii, with a very beautiful supination. I grabbed that one from the plant-selling market this year.
Jane: Complete the sentence: "I love my houseplants because..."
Mark: I love my cacti and succulents because I enjoy to propagate them, by seeds or by cuttings. In this way, I make an important contribution to the preservation of these beautiful plants.
Jane: Who is your houseplant hero?
Mark: My houseplant hero is the already deceased English botanist, Joseph Dalton Hooker. In the course of the Joseph Hooker Correspondence Project, brought to life by Kew, which is currently running, I have already been able to learn a lot about his important work which he has done in the past.
Jane: Name your plantagonist: the plant you simply cannot get along with!
Mark: I find it difficult to cultivate my grafted Mammillaria luethyi because it keeps getting attacked by the red spider mite and doesn't want to grow on its own roots.
Jane: Thank you, Mark. Great to hear from you! If you're sitting there thinking, "Oh, I quite fancy being on Meet The Listener but I'm a bit shy and I don't like the sound of my own voice!" well, let me tell you, you are fantastic and you deserve to be on Meet The Listener, so do not delay! Drop me an email to ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com and you will receive the details of how to take part. It's very, very simple and we just love hearing from all the different voices of On The Ledge listeners, so drop us a line and you could be featured on the show very soon!
While I was writing the book and on my break from the podcast, I got a lovely email from a listener called Lucy with a question and it concerned her son, Arthur, who is eight. Lucy is wondering if Arthur is the youngest listener to On The Ledge? Now, we know we've had various listeners get in touch before who've been ten, eleven, twelve, but eight? I think that's the youngest I've come across so far, Lucy! Arthur is devoted to the podcast, apparently, and Lucy and Arthur have listened to nearly every episode! Apparently Arthur has been "plant mad" from the age of four and spends all his pocket money on plants and he's got a Jewel Orchid inspired by On The Ledge! Wow, that's so lovely to hear! So I want to know, do you have an even younger listener to On The Ledge? I'd love to hear if you are eight, seven, six, five? How young can they get? I can't imagine! I'd love to hear from you if you are a really young listener to the show. Whether or not you want to do Meet The Listener is fine, it's immaterial, but I would just love to hear if there's anyone else as young, or younger than, Arthur, listening to the show! I hope your Jewel Orchid is doing very well, Arthur. I suspect that you have a long and lush career in houseplants ahead of you!
Now, it turns out that writing a book about houseplants is not very amenable to taking care of your own houseplants! I have been neglecting my collection this winter, as I have been tapping away to write the book! I've been putting that right this week, now that the manuscript is finished, and having a really good look at all my plants and, let me tell you, it's not all great news. There's a lot of crispy leaves, there's a lot of stuff looking less than ideal but, hey, that is winter for you. For those of you in the northern hemisphere, experiencing winter along with me, you will know that plants don't look their best at this time of year always. Obviously, some things just look great all year round. So I've been trying not to panic about this. With the number of plants I've got, it would be very easy just to be intimidated by the amount of stuff that needs doing, but I've just been taking it very calmly, especially, as I say, as I'm only just recovering from Covid, and dividing up the collection into little groups and just dealing with a shelf at a time or a desk at a time, taking everything off, cleaning down, checking every plant and, yes, there are lots of plants that still need dealing with, but by working through a little bit every day, I'm getting back on track.
One of my big goals for this year is to try to keep better records of my plants, not least because I'm going to start selling plants in person when I give talks. So I'm going to raise more plants for propagation and sell those when I do in-person talks and workshops because I think it'll be a fun thing to do, not because I'm going to make a fortune out of it. So I wanted to find something to keep track of all my plants. All of the plant apps that I've found have all been great for, "Oh, I want to know what this plant is" or "I want a reminder for when to water it" but I've not found any app that I've been happy with that will just act as a database. So I want to be able to enter the Latin name, take a picture of a plant, make notes. So the thing I'm trying right now is called Plant Base. It's a piece of software that goes onto your computer and this is the closest I've come to finding an answer for this problem because it literally is a database, as opposed to a reminder service, or an identification service. So I'm planning again. It would be very intimidating to think, "Gosh, I've got to put all my plants in here," so I'm trying to enter one plant per day into this system and that way, when I do things like propagation and repotting, I can make a note of it and I can also track changes in the plant through time. So I will put a link in the show notes to this package. I think it's called the Deeproot Plant Base. It is something that you can download. I think there is a trial period and then you pay a fee to have access to it, to have a licence, so it's not an ongoing charge. I think it's £25. So I'm going to try it out for the free trial and then see if I want to sign up. I'll put links to it in the show notes and if you have any other ideas of database apps, or software, that I could use, that you use to keep records, then I'd love to hear from you! I love working in pen and paper, but for this purpose, I really do need something that goes on the computer. So that's where I'm at with that!
So, I'm just trying to just breathe through my plant problems and accept that not everything is going to look great. I found a few plants with spider mites, I found a few plants looking really miserable, but I'm just gradually working my way through my collection. I'm not even necessarily targeting the plants that look worse yet. That may sound counter-intuitive, but I find that if I've got a plant that I can deal with quickly and just sort it out in five minutes, that maybe just needs a few leaves removing, it feels like a win and then I can build up, gird my loins, for dealing with the more difficult plants! So I've been doing a bit of that today and I'm trying to put aside an hour a day to work on my plants. I found myself spending so much time in front of the computer last year that I need more time away, so what better than spending time with my plants? So I'm prioritising that at the beginning of the day - an hour of plant time - and I've done that the last couple of days and it's just been absolutely fabulous. I don't know if it's because I finished the book manuscript, or because I'm playing with my plants, but my husband just said, "I can hear you singing and bouncing around back there! You're obviously happy!" and I'm like, "Yes, of course! I'm doing planty stuff!" So that's one of the joys that I'm experiencing right now and long may it continue in 2022!
I was going to tell you about some of these interesting plants that I've been discovering during the writing of the book. So, 25 iconic houseplant species are profiled in the book. They will probably be all things you've heard of, but one of the other things that happened along the way, was that I found lots of plants that I'd never heard of, or only heard of in oblique references, and wanted to bring these to you as maybe suggestions for something for you to research and maybe add to your collection this year.
We're going to start off with a plant that I mention in the chapter on Zamioculcas zamiifolia. Now, I think we're probably all familiar with the ZZ plant, or Zanzibar Gem, as it's also sometimes known. A really bomb-proof plant, you might say; a really easy houseplant that has become incredibly popular across the world. When I was researching that, I also discovered a close relative of Zamioculcas. Now, Zamioculcas is what's called a monotypic genus. What the heck is a monotypic genus, Jane? Well, all that means is that the Zamioculcas part of the name, the genus, which is the equivalent of my surname, so Zamioculcas is the equivalent of Perrone, there's only one species within that genus. So Zamioculcas zamiifolia is the only species in the Zamioculcasgenus. So there's only one person with the last name Zamioculcas, if you see what I mean? It'd be like me just being the only Perrone in the world. Now, there is a plant that used to be placed in the genus Zamioculcas but has now been moved to another genus that's closely related and it's called Gonatopus boivinii**.*Like the Zamioculcas zamifolia, Gonatopus is in the Aroid* family and there's about five species in the genus.
The one I want to tell you about is called Gonatopus boivinii, with the fantastic common name, Giraffe's Knees! Who doesn't want a plant called Giraffe's Knees!? I love giraffes. They're just awesome animals. They're almost up there with my all-time favourite animal, the chameleon. Anyway, Giraffe's Knees: why the heck is it called Giraffe's Knees? Well, it's got a strange feature, it's got just one leaf and part of the way up that leaf petiole, which effectively looks like the main stem because there is only one leaf, you get this swollen bit that looks a bit like a giraffe's knee. Who doesn't want to have that plant in their collection? This is an Aroid, so when it flowers, you do get that classic spathe and spadix look, where you get the hooded spathe, the modified leaf bract around the spike-like spadix, where the plant's flowers grow in dense populations. So it doesn't actually look that similar to a ZZ Plant in many ways. I've also seen growers compare this plant, Giraffe's Knees, to Amorphophallus, in that it does grow from a corm and you get this single leaf, which is similar. Some people call it a Caudiciform. I don't know. I would imagine, strictly speaking, it is a Caudiciform, although in some of the pictures I've seen, the caudex is below the surface, rather than on top of it.
This is not a plant that you're going to be picking up in your local big box store, in case you hadn't already guessed. You're going to have to hunt around for it. As ever, please be responsible if you're trying to track down this plant and make sure you're only buying from somebody who has propagated and grown it themselves, rather than tearing it out of habitat. As always, the rule is if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. It seems that some people in tropical climates who've planted it outside have found it quite invasive. Obviously, as a houseplant, it may be somewhat different, but if you're looking for something a little bit different, this might be the Aroid for you.
The second thing I wanted to talk about was grafted cacti. I went down many a rabbit hole looking at cactus catalogues from the period roughly 1890s to about 1950. These catalogues are amazing! The illustrations, the photographs, the range of everything from Epiphyllums, to Euphorbias, to Echinocereus that these nurseries sold was actually mind-blowing! The thing I loved most was the amazing illustrations, these incredible line drawings and illustrations of the things they were selling. What I really noticed was some serious amounts of grafting was going on back then, in a way that I don't think we see happening today. So, for example, you'd see an Echinocereus, a ball-shaped cactus, flowering, but it would be grafted onto a Columnar cereus cactus, really quite a narrow one, so that it looked like a lollipop with a flower on the top! It looks amazing! I've just got one in front of me here, this is Echinocereus pectinatus, grafted. "Grafted on a strong cereus on which it makes a fine growth and a large bloom, price each 75 cents to $2". That was quite expensive back then. This catalogue dates to 1906, The Calendar Cactus Company from Springfield, Ohio. So that was quite a lot of money back in 1906, $2. My mind has been blown by all of these grafted cacti!
I've got another one here, Cactus culture: Illustrated cacti and desert plant catalogue, third edition, by Desert Plant Co (El Paso, Texas), 1928. In here, there's an amazing picture. It's a group of grafted cacti. How many is here? Fourteen cacti that have been grafted! I think they're all grafted onto cereus by the look of it. Let's just have a look at the text. The text says, "Grafting cacti has come to be recognised as the best means by which certain desirable ends may be obtained and is much practised by fanciers who are making a careful study of their curious and truly wonderful specimens of this strange branch of nature. The main object of grafting is to procure a quicker growth and to improve and increase the bloom."
So they're using Cereus columnar cacti as their base for the graft and they've got all kinds of things grafted on here that look amazing! So we've got, according to this catalogue, one of the popular combinations is Cereus flagelliformis on Cereus colubrius,**Cereus nauticalus, or Pereskia. "The Cereus flagelliformis, being a drooping plant, by having its head held up two or more feet, a fine specimen is obtained that can be set up anywhere." So, yes, you end up with a vertical stem and then on top this drooping plant or sometimes a cristate plant or a straight globe. I can see an Astrophytum on the top of one of these grafts. It just looks incredible! I've not seen so much of that in the modern cactus-growing world, as there obviously was back then. It's just fascinating to see how that culture has developed. I guess there might be reasons now why grafting is less popular. I don't know. I'd be interested to hear from people deep within the cactus world, as to whether there's a reason why it's gone out of fashion a little bit, but it does make me want to give it a try because it just looks incredibly fun.
I also learned a little bit about Theodosia Burr Shepherd while I was writing the book. Theodosia Burr Shepherd was a botanist, a woman botanist and a plant breeder, and I came across one of her catalogues from 1914. It was called Rare Plants: Choice Flower Seeds Cacti and Succulents, Theodosia B. Shepherd Company, Ventura, California. She was well known in the state of California as a breeder and this catalogue is absolutely stuffed full of things like new Double Petunias and there's a whole section on beautiful tuberous Begonias and it's subtitled, "The Fashionable Flower". There's also giant Petunias, marvellous Double Petunias and then they describe Begonias as "our specialty". This woman, given that she was operating in the 19th Century, the Victorian age, she was a powerhouse! She read plants, she lectured about plants, she sold plants, she hybridised. To be honest, I'm kind of embarrassed that I hadn't come across this woman before because she sounds absolutely amazing and I do want to do more research about her life. There's plenty in this catalogue to absolutely love. It's interesting to see what people wanted to grow back then and the catalogue has a section on Fibrous Begonias, The Fashionable Flower.
"We wish everyone who really loves flowers to become better acquainted with this charming and useful class of plants" and there's a picture of the Tree Begonia, Fair Rosamond, which is absolutely dripping with flowers but also has some pretty nice leaves, from what I can see from this black and white photograph. Clearly, Mrs Shepherd's giant Tree Begonias were quite something! The catalogue reads: "Words are inadequate to describe the beauty of these splendid Begonias as they appear in our lathe and greenhouses. Of the President Carnot type, but greatly superior, all have large, oblong leaves and immense panicles of very large flowers and shades of pink and red. They are tree-like, strong and robust, sending up a great number of canes to heights of six and ten feet." Wow! There's also a giant climbing Begonia called Marjorie Daw, which is a cross between Rubra and Glaucophylla scandanes and I actually found a picture of Theodosia Shepherd with her Tree Begonia. I'll put a link to that on the website, taken in about 1900 from the Museum of Ventura County, which is where she was from. The caption says: "Theodosia Burr Shepherd stands in an enclosed garden structure with her back to the camera. She is examining her Tree Begonia, Fair Rosamond." What a woman!
I just love the names of the Rex Begonias. The Rex Begonias are always given the most dramatic names of all. So under a list of new Rex Begonias, we've got Alfonso, Victor, Storm Cloud, Emperor William and Monster. Fantastic stuff! I just love looking through the Begonia listings. It's made me kind of sad that these Begonias are not so easy to get hold of these days. However, I do have the new Dibly's catalogue and I'm very excited about ordering some Begonias from there as soon as I can.
I'm going to talk about one more thing that blew my mind while researching this book and that is how many varieties of English Ivy, aka Hedera helix, there are. There are so many, I can't even begin to tell you how many varieties there are! Obviously, some of these are designed for growing outdoors - they are more substantial, they have bigger leaves - but many, many, many plants have been specifically designed for growing indoors and specifically for use as topiary. This was a really big trend in Victorian times, to have Ivies growing around particular shapes, trained up into topiaries, and I found a lot of these in the journals of the American Ivy Society. Their journal had a whole special issue on topiary, which was amazing. If I can, I'll try to link to that in the show notes. It shows all different shapes that you can do the topiary and suggestions for varieties that work best and tips on how to do it. You can make them out of chicken wire, the shapes, and then train things up them. The world is your oyster! I like this tip: "Just because you have a topiary dog does not mean you have to treat it like a dog. Remember, your topiary dog is just a plant growing in a very unusual container."
It recommends, well, actually, has a top ten Ivies for topiary, some of which I've heard of, like Spetchley, which is a really tiny little-leaved Ivy which is good for this kind of work, where you want small leaves, and Gold Heart, which I've also heard of, which has got bright yellow variegation, and some other ones I've never heard of, there's one called Mini Esther, which is tiny and white apparently, and another called Wall Femensis, which I've never heard of, which is a dark green, small, fast-growing Ivy, which sounds ideal for topiary because you do want it to cover the shape quickly. There's a whole world of info out there about how to do this Ivy topiary stuff.
I guess it's probably fallen a bit out of fashion among those of us of the 21st Century because this will not do well in a centrally heated room. It needs to be somewhere that's going to have good light but it's not going to have dry air and that probably perhaps suited Victorian homes better than our own. If you've got a porch, or a covered area, or an unheated room, this could be a really nice thing to try. The great thing about Ivy is it's cheap. You may not be able to get hold of all of these unusual varieties, but if you go to your local garden centre, you will be able to get hold of a small-leaved Ivy that would work for these kind of projects and it's really not expensive to buy.
So it's an interesting concept and I would love to hear from anyone who's given it a try. Of course, the other thing that I talk about in the Hedera helix chapter, is the fact that the name Ivy has been awarded to many a plant which is not an Ivy. One of the other plants I want to celebrate is x Fatshedera lizei, which is an intergeneric hybrid, so it's a hybrid between Fatsia and Hedera and I just think this is a really cool plant. I haven't got one but I really want one, so let's celebrate x Fatshedera lizei, if I can say it, and send me your thoughts on Ivy topiary.
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Jane: Well, that is it for this week's show. I'm so delighted to be back talking to you and I'll be here for the next few weeks, bringing you delightful houseplant-related content of all kinds. I've got some trips coming up, some trips organised to go and see interesting people and bring those chats to you in this here podcast. So thanks, as ever, for your support and I will speak to you again next Friday. That sounds good! All right, take care. Bye!
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Jane: The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll, by The Joy Drops, The Road We Used To Travel When We Were Kids, by Komiku and Chiefs, by Jahzzar and Oh Mallory, by Josh Woodward. All tracks are licensed under Creative Commons. Visit the show notes for details.
Subscribe to On The Ledge via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Player FM, Stitcher, Overcast, RadioPublic and YouTube.
Welcome back everyone! I have finished the manuscript for my book Legends of the Leaf, but this week I want to tell you about some of the fascinating plants I met along the way that you may not have come across. Plus I answer a question about a spider plant, and we hear from listener Mark.
Check out the notes below as you listen…
A grafted Christmas cactus from the Theodosia B. Shepherd Co catalogue, 1905-06 . Photograph: Biodiversity Heritage Library on Flickr.
An engraving of grafted cactus from the catalogue of the Desert Plant Company, 1928.
If you want to find out more about Kew Gardens’ Joseph Hooker Correspondence Project mentioned by listener Mark, find out more here.
If you’re faced with a long list of houseplant jobs, take a leaf out of my book: take a deep breath, set aside a few minutes every day for plant care, and tackle the issues one plant, shelf, desk or prop box at a time. Don’t necessarily start with the worst-looking plants - sometimes a “quick win” on a plant that just needs some crispy leaves removing will power you on to your next task!
The plant database I am trialling is Deeproot Plant Base - it’s not specifically for indoor gardeners but I am not sure that matters. I shall report back on how I get on, and let me know if you have any other suggestions.
While researching the ZZ plant, Zamioculcas zamiifolia, for Legends of the Leaf, I came across another aroid that is a close relative: giraffe’s knees, Gonatopus boivinii. This species looks more like an amorphophallus than a ZZ plant, with one single pinnate leaf growing from a corm. The tall petiole has a strange bump in it that looks like a giraffe’s knee. This is not a common houseplant so will only be available from specialist growers, and as always make sure you buy from someone who is raising plants themselves rather than taking from the wild.
Grafted cacti seem to have much more in fashion in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Check out this catalogue the Desert Plant Company in El Paso from 1928 for some examples.
Theodosia Burr Shepherd was a plant botanist and breeder from California. I came across her plant catalogues while researching the book. I was drawn to her tree Begonia ‘Fair Rosamond’ which can be seen in this catalogue. There’s is an image of with her tree begonia here.
I loved reading about Hedera helix topiary via the publications of the American Ivy Society. You can read more about this in their topiary special from 2008 (PDF).
If you love ivy but want to try something different for indoors, try growing x Fatshedera lizei.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Quinn wants to know why their variegated spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum - most likely the cultivar ‘Variegatum’) - pictured left - has started to put out some green leaves and green babies, a phenomenon known as reversion.
Lack of light or lack of nutrients can sometimes be to blame for such reversions, but sometimes there is no obvious explanation. It’s worth keeping an eye on the reverted plant in case it does something interesting - this is how new things come into cultivation in the houseplant world!
The news article about big box stores and ‘rare’ variegated plants is here.
For more on spider plants, do listen to On The Ledge episode 101 which is devoted to this species.
Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue!
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CREDITS
This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku, Chiefs by Jahzzar and Oh Mallory by Josh Woodward.