Episode 223: Tradescantia with Avery Rowe
Tradescantia pallida ‘Purple Pixie’. Photograph: Avery Rowe.
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Transcript
Episode 223
Jane Perrone 00:04
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Jane Perrone 01:05
Chlorophyll filled felicitations to one and all - I'm Jane Perrone. This is On The Ledge. Let's go. In this week's show, I chat to Avery Rowe about all things Tradescantia and I answer a question about baby Saxifrages.
Jane Perrone 01:31
A warm welcome to the show with a particular hat tip in the direction of Janni, Mercy, Haley, Rachel and Ryan who all became patrons this week. If you want to find out more about supporting on the ledge every month, check the show notes for details. Tradescantias, we all grow them. We all love them. But sometimes it's not that easy to make them look their best. And there's often a lot of confusion around which one is which. And that's what we're going to tackle in today's show with guest Avery Rowe who is a real expert in the house plant species and cultivars of this genus. Just a quick note before we get into that interview, Tradescantias have many common names. I tend to call them Tradescantias, which works but you might also see them named as inch plants, spiderwort, zebra plant or wandering dude; in France, the plant is called misère which means misery. read into that what you will, but there is one common name that is often used for this plant. Similar to wandering dude that you won't hear on On The Ledge podcast. It's a bigoted term for the plant which has no place in the 21st century. So I just wanted to clarify that before we got going. If you're confused about why that isn't mentioned in the show. I'll link to a couple of articles that explain this. If you want to go deeper and find out more about why more and more nurseries and plant shops are dropping that name.
Jane Perrone 01:32
With that out of the way. Let's crack on with my interview with Avery. If you've ever wondered why your Tradescantia is distressingly leggy, I'm glad to say Avery's got the answer.
Avery Rowe 03:19
My name is Avery Rowe. And I'm a researcher and collector of Tradescantia plants and the Commelinaceae family generally. I'm also the cultivar registration authority for the Tradescantiagenus,
Jane Perrone 03:50
Can I just praise you for a minute Avery, I'm have to say your website and the posts that you put on there are, I think, one of the best resources on the internet. It's just outstanding, the work you're doing. So if I may just praise you at the beginning. I'm really glad to have you on the show, because I'm always trying to counter the kind of poor information that's out there. And I think you might be able to sort out a few, a few issues with this particular genus.
Avery Rowe 04:17
Wow, thank you. What a compliment.
Jane Perrone 04:20
There are a lot of issues going on. And I guess this is the meat of your work, trying to figure this stuff out. But let's start from the very beginning. The Tradescantia genus, the this is a genus that's been popular for houseplants for forever, but I don't know a great deal about their wild nature and how that translates to them as indoor plants. Can you fill us in on that?
Avery Rowe 04:48
So Tradescantia is a genus of currently about 85 species and it's quite a large and varied genus. Historically, it's been divided up into more separate genera but this recently has been more of a move to combining them. So there's a lot of variation within it. The genus is native to the Americas exclusively. And there's a combination of some temperate plants which are native to like North America, which are popularly grown as garden plants. And if you know them as houseplants you might not even recognise those garden types because they seem very different perennials. And then there are a lot of tender tropical species that are native to central and southern America. They grow in places like kind of forest floors and along rivers, and some in more kind of dry desert he places so again, still quite a lot of variation. And those are generally sort of vines and creepers. And those are the ones that people tend to know of as houseplants.
Jane Perrone 05:47
When were we first starting to grow Tradescantia as a houseplant, when when they were they sort of started to be to be given scientific names?
Avery Rowe 05:54
From the research that I've done so far, which is, you know, not not complete by any means most of the sort of tropical species came into cultivation generally in the late 1800s. Some a little bit before then. But more since then. And there's quite a few species that have only been introduced in the 1900s. So although they seem like very sort of old house plants, I think compared to cultivated plants in general, they're comparatively fairly recent, some of them.
Jane Perrone 06:25
Yeah, that's interesting, I guess, like so many plants came into cultivation in the 1800s, didn't they? It's like a mass rush. But it's, I mean, obviously, still a few more being added to the list. What made you choose to focus on Tradescantia - what was it that a particularly about that genius that drew you in?
Avery Rowe 06:42
I'm not really sure, I sort of I was just kind of get caught into houseplans generally, you know, like everyone did a few years ago. And sort of a got a few Tradescantias. And as I was kind of reading up about them, I found that there was there were lots of different kind of cultivars that people were growing, I think personality wise, I have a tendency towards being a sort of a collector. So just that aspect kind of appealed to me. And then also, as I was learning about the different cultivars that they were, I found that there was a lot of confusion and misinformation, misidentification, and that kind of stuff. It also really appeals to me because I love kind of learning and research and sharing information. So I sort of got interested in clearing up confusion and and explaining things and so it just kind of spiralled, I guess.
Jane Perrone 07:34
Well, one of the things I learned from your website Tradescantia Hub is that there are five sub genera in this genus. Is there one of those that's particularly full of all the houseplant species?
Avery Rowe 07:47
They're spread across sort of a couple of them. One of the most common houseplant sub genera is Austrotradescantia, and that contains Tradescantia fluminensis, which is one of the most common houseplant species. Campelia, which is the one that contains Tradescantia zebrina. They're not kind of evenly distributed over all the sub genera because there's one that's kind of just the temperate species. So there's no houseplants in there. Of the 85 species, there's only really a handful that are common as houseplants most of them are quite sort of unfamiliar.
Jane Perrone 08:22
Moving on to Tradescantia as houseplants. They're very, very popular, but I always think that sometimes they're not the plants that necessarily grow successfully for everybody. Some, you know, you often see that really spindly Tradescantia looking really sad on a window ledge. Where are we going wrong with these plants? How do we get these beautiful food plants that we desire?
Avery Rowe 08:47
Yeah, it's tricky, because I would I would call Tradescantia easy to grow houseplants. But the issue is that I guess they're a bit similar to you know, succulents or something like that. They're like, they're easy to grow if you do the right things. But you have to treat them a bit differently than some other houseplants. So you have to kind of know a few basics in order to get it right. And there's a few main things that you need to think of. So one of them is that Tradescantias are semi succulents, which a lot of people don't realise because they look, they just look like kind of typical leafy tropical plants, but they're actually very drought tolerant, and less tolerant of over watering than you might expect. So a kind of a good first principle is to water them less than you think you should, and they will, they will generally do fine. So like, you should basically wait until the soil is pretty much dry, and then drench it similar to the way you would for a succulent.
Avery Rowe 09:42
And then the second sort of big thing that people have trouble with is that they they grow really fast and because of their natural growth habit is that they tend to be sort of creeping, sprawling plants. So in the wild, they kind of spread along the floor and they kind of crawl along, putting roots down everywhere they're stem touches. So they're not designed to go vertically upwards. And they're not designed to trail downwards. They're designed to kind of spread outwards. But obviously, in a pot, that's not really possible. So when they stay confined to a pot, they will end up trailing. And that's not what they like to do. So they will gradually lose the leaves that are closer to the soil, the stems will become brittle. And they'll eventually start to just break off in chunks. And that's kind of a natural adaptation when they do that in the wild. That's how they propagate and spread themselves. So like, the plant doesn't mind doing that. But obviously, if you're keeping it in a pot, it might not be what you want it to do.
Jane Perrone 10:41
This is so interesting, because this is so similar to what I've been writing about in my blog writing this book. And there are so many trailing plants this applies to that actually, they don't really want to trail.
Avery Rowe 10:53
No plant is really designed to trail is it, like that? Why would a plant ever want to do that? There's no reason. So it's like it's kind of an artificial thing that we impose on plants that actually just want to crawl on the floor.
Jane Perrone 11:03
Yeah, exactly. It's so interesting.
Avery Rowe 11:05
So yeah, the way to sort of prevent that look that you're probably familiar with where it looks really bare on the top, and then there's these leaves kind of hanging down below it is that you just need to prune them strictly and frequently. So like, you need to stop the stems from ever getting that long, basically. And what you can also do is when you prune it, you can stick the cuttings straight back in the soil because one of the great unique things about Tradescantias is that they are just ridiculously easy to propagate like laughably easy, you can chuck a bit of broken stem on the floor, and it will just make roots and grow. Yeah, so the best way to maintain a happy, bushy look in Tradescantia in a pot is to prune it frequently. And keep sticking the cuttings back in the pot.
Jane Perrone 11:53
That is really good advice. And I you know, just seeing so many pictures of sad looking Tradescantia that you think, Oh, they need some help.
Avery Rowe 12:02
Yeah, and people assign all kinds of reasons to that look, as well. Some people say, or they hate being watered from above, which is you know, not true. Some people say it means there's not enough sunlight coming to the top of the pot, which is also not true. It's like it this is just entirely to do with the way that they naturally grow there's there's no type of care can change that they are not designed to grow long vines with a single point of attachment to the soil.
Jane Perrone 12:26
They must be quite adaptable because they are so popular and they can survive in all kinds of places. How much light can they take?
Avery Rowe 12:32
Yeah, so that's one of the things that varies a fair bit between different species and different cultivars. So there are some that that really need like as much sun as you can possibly give so like Tradescantia pallida, which the most common cultivar is 'Purpurea', which is the really bright purple one that you might sort of be familiar with, that one needs like tonnes and tonnes of light to get the best colour really and if it's if you keep it in a shady place, it will be really sort of pasty, pale kind of greyish green with these long noodley stems and just look really sad. Zebrinas are among the most kind of adaptable to light levels. So like if you can put them in like full south facing sun in the UK, and they will look really good. You know, they'll have like super, super bright colours that go really red and purple. But they can also do well in kind of more shady indirect light and they will still they'll still do okay, you know, they'll look a bit different they'll look a bit more greenish in colour, but they'll grow fine. And then the sort of Tradescantia fluminensis and mandula and the kind of related cultivars from that group, they tend to do best in like, not so much really bright sun so they are good for shade and they will do fine in kind of more indirect indoor light. So there's like there's a big range really
Jane Perrone 13:55
What about substrate? We haven't mentioned substrate, I mean people grow these in all kinds of garden soil all sorts.
Avery Rowe 14:02
Oh yes, I mean, the reason I haven't mentioned substrate is because they basically they don't care. Anything you can check them on the floor and they'll grow and people people grow them in hydroponics and leca and you can use like succulent soil or aroid soil or just whatever potting compost you have. And basically they'll be fine.
Jane Perrone 14:23
I agree. Well, that's good to know. Are they like cacti and succulents and they're not a heavy feeders.
Avery Rowe 14:29
It's hard to say I think that I think yeah, that they're not sort of super heavy feeders but like like any plants, they will benefit from being fed a bit and they're hungrier than sort of typical cacti and succulents just because they grow fast. So they just physically need more stuff to grow, but they're not like they're not like tomatoes or something, you know, okay, kind of treat them like an average house plan with fertiliser intermittently if you can, or use some kind of slow release stuff or compost in the soil and then there'll be fine for months.
Jane Perrone 15:05
We'll be back with Avery shortly for more Tradescantia intelligence. But now it's time for question of the week, which comes from Lauren and Lauren wanted to know how big Saxifraga baby plants should be before they are ready to break that umbilical cord of the stolon and be potted up on their own and grown on?
Jane Perrone 15:30
This is a great question. I mean, I can't resist answering a Saxifraga stolonifera question, if you're a regular listener to the show, you will know that this plant the mother of thousands, it's sometimes called, I think it should be called the jellyfish plant, because it does look a bit like a jellyfish with this rosette of hairy leaves. And then these stolons coming out, which are wire thin and droop down, and at the end of each of them is a baby plant, which start off tiny, but they can get quite large if you leave that stolon in place.
Jane Perrone 16:04
They are super easy to propagate because those baby plants do root really easily. But it's a good question, at what point can they strike out on their own? The answer is it depends purely based on what kind of propagation you're going to go for. One of the easiest ways of propagating these plants, if you have room in the top of the pot, is just to loop that baby back onto the surface of the substrate of the parent plant and get a little unfolded paperclip or something to just hold down the stolen just next to the baby plant. That means that it's in contact with the soil. And as a result, it will start to produce roots. And then once it's got a decent root system going, you can just carefully remove it from the pot, you may have to take the whole mother plant out of the pot and tease it away gradually. But it's very, very easy to do. And the plant should grow well, because it's still got that connection to the parent plant, which means it's still getting nutrients from that parent, if you want to go for the more brutal chopping technique, then it's best not to do it when the plants absolutely tiny. I mean, they start off mere millimetres across and you know they can get. So the leaves are about two three centimetres across their largest size. I mean, I don't know how long you could keep them on the plant and what size they'd reach. But you don't want to take them off when they're absolutely miniscule, because they're hard to handle. And the plant just hasn't got enough in the way of resources to really survive.
Jane Perrone 17:48
So wait until they're at least the size of I don't know, trying to think of something that will translate around the world I was gonna say a conker, but then I'm not sure if people outside the UK know what a conker is, I would say the leaves have got to be at least a centimetre or two across before you go for this technique. And the best thing to do when you do take them off, is press that plant into the top of some moist substrate and then place the whole thing in a clear plastic bag or a propagation box to give the plant a best chance of success. The other thing that's worth saying and this is a little secret about Saxifrage is that not everyone knows is quite often without you doing anything yourself, you will find if you have a rummage around the top of the pot, that there are baby plants already routed. I'm never quite sure how this happens. But oftentimes, if you just look, you'll find this and baby plants already waiting to go to their new homes rooted and everything. So if that is the case, for your plant, it's even easier, you can just make sure those little plants have got a decent root system of a few centimetres couple of centimetres, and then tease them away and pop them up. This plant really does make life easy for you. And if you're interested in finding out more about Saxifraga stolonifera, I will put a link in the show notes to an episode where I cover them in more depth.
Jane Perrone 19:18
As always, with any propagation, what you're aiming for is just to make the conditions as ideal and comfortable as possible for that plant so it can put lots of energy into root production. That's where it'll start you probably won't notice the baby plant growing much at first, it'll be putting all its energy into those roots. So humidity reasonably high helps and also keeping that soil moist but not too moist. And just watch out for any leaves that die back because they can be a source of fungal infections and so on but really, it's not that hard to get this plant to propagate. That said, Don't do what I did with my 'Tricolor', the beautiful white, pink and green saxifraga stolonifera and give away all the babies and then kill the parent plant.
Jane Perrone 20:05
Hmm, not very clever. I now have another one. So I'm taking very good care of that one. But it is a plant that's worth propagating regularly because it's quite short lived. It doesn't last very long. Even the best cared for plants petered out after a few years. I hope that helps Lauren. And if you've got a question for On The Ledge, drop me a line in the old email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com.
Jane Perrone 20:32
Now let's get back to Tradescantias. There's been some controversies over the years, this goes back right back to I'm thinking of, you know, my vintage house plant books from the 70s and 80s, where the names have changed quite a bit along the way. What how has this happened? Is it because they all look fairly similar? Or is it just because they're so popular as houseplants that nurseries have been sticking different names on them? Without much regard for the science?
Avery Rowe 21:00
It's a weird situation. It's I think it's a combination of factors. I think partly there's definitely that they will look quite similar, you know, historically, you know, growers and nurseries would kind of just label everything as Tradescantia albiflora, which is, that's now considered a synonym for Tradescantia fluminensis, but they would just kind of slap that label on any sort of greenish, creeping Tradescanti, and actually, there's a bunch of species that will kind of would come under that label. But people mostly just kind of didn't bother to distinguish because they're all more or less the same in cultivation terms. Tradescantias, although they're very like commonly grown and widespread, hardly anyone has ever really specialised in them. So it's the sort of plant where every nursery would have like one or two cultivars in the corner, that they kind of throw in with everything else. But because there weren't many people that were sort of collecting or researching the genus as a whole, there would be a lot of kind of everyone would just make up their own name for the plant. And sometimes the same name would get used for different plants. And sometimes the same plant would get given a bunch of different names by different people. That's like a lot of what my research is now trying to make a kind of authoritative checklist of all of the cultivars that there are, and what their correct names are, to try and kind of clear up all of that confusion that's been going on for like more than 100 years.
Jane Perrone 22:22
That sounds like a big task - when you're doing that and you've got two different plants with different names. And you're comparing them to see whether they might be the same plant, what are you actually looking for?
Avery Rowe 22:33
It's tricky, because one of the unique things about Tradescantias is that they can vary their appearance so dramatically in different growing conditions. So the same plant, if you go in low light or high light or with a lot of water and not much water, it can look like as if it's a totally different species. So if I have two plants that I'm not sure whether they're the same or different, I throw them together in identical conditions, basically, for a long time, and examine them really carefully to see if there's any way to distinguish them, or if they seem to be, you know, indistinguishable, and then can be perceived to be the same.
Jane Perrone 23:11
I see. Right? So you've actually got to grow them out and really check that they're under the same conditions they look identical and presumably the flowers? I mean, I know their flowers aren't particularly exciting, but if they flower that gives you another set of clues.
Avery Rowe 23:25
It can be a clue. Yeah. Although because like you said they they often they don't flower very easily the house plant type sometimes, and they're not generally grown for their flowers. So it means that the cultivars haven't been kind of selected for specific flowering traits. So it means that often the flowers are just the same regardless. So even I've got like a bunch of Zebrina cultivars that have clearly different foliage, you know, they're different clones. But when you compare their flowers alone, they are totally identical. So it doesn't help at all.
Jane Perrone 23:55
I see. Well, I mean, you're making this task sound absolutely enormous. So I salute you, but I want to get into some of these gnarly issues with naming now 'Quadricolour', this is the one that I think possibly on the social media has been one of the most lively discussions. I keep seeing people selling something as 'Quadricolour', and I'm thinking I don't think that looks like a 'Quadricolour' but who am I to say so what's going on with 'Quadricolour'?
Avery Rowe 24:25
So the situation is in the the late 1800s to the early 1900s, around the turn of the century, there was a new cultivar of Tradescantia Zebrina that had kind of unusual, sectoral variation. So they have random pink and white sort of bands on the leaves. And that was originally given the name 'Multicolour Madame Lequesne'. And then that kind of became known as sometimes there's just 'Multicolour', and then the name 'Quadricolour' came into use for that cultivar and over the sort of 1900s that It became exclusively the name 'Quadricolour' was used for that plant. So it's been, it's about 100 years old now, it was kind of very popular when it first came in, and then it's become less widespread recently. And it's not, it's not grown by any sort of huge commercial wholesalers at the moment. So you'll get it from kind of collectors and small specialists nurseries, but you won't find it, you know, in a garden centre sort of thing.
Avery Rowe 25:25
And then, meanwhile, over about the last 20 or 30, maybe 40 years, a new cultivar came in, that's a variegated cultivar of Tradescantia mandula, which is a kind of a small green leafed creeping one. And this new cultivar has kind of pinkish cream sectoral variations, so kind of random stripes on the leaves again, and that cultivar has been given a bunch of different names to sell it sometimes it's called 'Rainbow' sometimes it's called 'Tricolour'. Some people just call it 'Variegata' and all kinds of other things. And one of the names that is often sold with is 'Quadricolour'. And this cultivar is produced on a huge scale by a lot of wholesalers. So it's very, very common today, so you'll find it easily in your garden centres. houseplant shops is everywhere. And it's it's often sold with a name 'Quadricolour'. So we're now in this situation where the name 'Quadricolour' originally and correctly refers to this very old variegated Tradescantia zebrina. But it's become much much better known as the name for this variegated Tradescantia. Medulla is a big confusing mess at this point.
Jane Perrone 26:39
That is a big confusing mess. So when you're buying 'Quadricolour', what would you advise?
Avery Rowe 26:44
Well, ultimately, you need to be able to recognise it so that you can look at the plant and know that what you're getting is what you intend to get. That's the kind of most important thing you need to be able to, to identify the plant that you're looking for. So that you don't have to trust the sellers ID because basically, you can never trust a seller's ID. Anytime you're buying a plant, you need to be confident that what you see is what you want, regardless of what is being called because it's that's never reliable. But yeah, if you are looking for the Zebrina 'Quadricolour', then you'll probably need to look in places like Etsy, eBay, and collectors, Facebook groups and things like that, where you can find individual people that are selling it you if you see something in a garden centre labelled as 'Quadricolour'. That's not it.
Jane Perrone 27:32 Is there a sort of a killer thing? The way you can just look at it and go Well, that's definitely 'Quadricolour' because...
Avery Rowe 27:36
Basically, that's what it is, it looks like Zebrina so it's got it's got this kind of greenish, purplish leaves with wide, two wide silver bands on each leaf. And then the 'Quadricolour' cultivar has kind of random patches of white and pink sort of overlaid over those silver stripes. So is the silver stripes that you're looking for? That's what proves that it's a cultivar of Zebrina. Whereas the mundula, it's just plain green with pink stripes. So if you see plain green leaves anywhere, it's it's not Zebrina.
Jane Perrone 28:11
Right, got you. And we should say also a little plug for you that you do have run a sort of a micronursery - I'm sure you're selling 'Quadricolour' correctly! And I'm sure there's other there's others discussions going on. And I'm sure you could fill us in.
Avery Rowe 28:27
I mean, yeah, there's loads more.
Jane Perrone 28:29
Well this is where I would refer people to your to your wonderful website for where you're updating constantly all the work that you're doing with getting a list of all these cultivars as accurately as you can how far into this project,
Avery Rowe 28:42
There is an end in sight - the sort of end goal is to have a complete checklist of every name that's ever been used, and of every cultivar that is known to exist, and of how those names link to those cultivars. So that's that's what I'm working towards, and I am chipping away at it. But it's probably going to be possibly years before it's finished. I'm kind of I'm hoping for months, but it's hard to predict really.
Jane Perrone 29:11
We should all be glad that you're doing it because hopefully this will cut through you know, we can refer people to your website when these questions are happening to go look, here's the information. Avery's done the work. You must have, given that you're growing all these plants and examining them your collection must be extensive. Are there any Tradescantia you have not managed to get hold of yet that are still on your wish list?
Avery Rowe 29:34
There's one particular one that I think may be extinct from cultivation, but it's called Tradescantia cerinthoides 'Variegata'. It's sort of it's similar to the 'Nanouk'. But instead of having the sort of uniform stripes, it's got the kind of random sectoral variation so you know, sometimes the leaf will be half and half or sometimes there'll be solid green or solid white. it arose in the 50s or sometime around then, and was popular for a while. But then I think when 'Nanouk' sort of came into popularity, the 'Variegata' just kind of dropped out. And so it was, it was awarded an RHS Award of Garden Merit something like 10 or 15 years ago, I think. But since then it's just kind of disappeared. And I found the most recent evidence I found a bit existing is a photo from a blog in Japan in 2013. And since then, nothing.
Jane Perrone 30:32
Oh, wow. That sounds like a good treasure hunt. I mean, I know I have. I have listeners who work at Wisley and places, and probably some in Japan. So if anyone can track down this plant for Avery , like we need to hear from you, this could be exciting. But it's not a very long period of time for a plant to totally disappear?
Avery Rowe 30:49
it's surprising, considering how recently it was, you know, popular was getting an RHS award. It was like a well known one and now it's just just Yeah, gone.
Jane Perrone 30:57
That's amazing. I don't know. It's very exciting to think that one day something might happen. And you might suddenly Yeah, but and where are you? I mean, once you've finished this project, what's next? I
31:10 Don't know really I haven't thought about I mean, I guess I sort of been vaguely thinking that once I've finished the Tradescantia genus, I will move on to other Commelinaceae genera. And they will in comparison, there will be a much much smaller job like all of the non Tradescantia cultivars in the whole family are probably fewer than all of the Tradescantia cultivars, just because Tradescantia is the by far the most common genus in the family, but you've got things like Callisia, haven't you?
Jane Perrone 31:38
As you say, nice to take on a job that's a bit more manageable, once you've finished this one. And I'm interested just to quickly go back as somebody who is interested in outdoor gardening too, you've reminded me of the outdoor Tradescantia, which I have had had in gardens in the past, and I seem to remember being quite aggressively aggressive, if I can put it that way. I can't remember what the species name is that the one with the the strappy leaves, do you know the one I mean?
Avery Rowe 32:34
The garden cultivars are generally agreed to be a kind of a mishmash of hybrids of a couple of different native species to the Northern America and the group are generally called the Andersoniana group. So that's the name of the hybrid. Sometimes they used to be called, Tradescantia x Andersoniana. But it's now accepted that it's not a sort of a scientific hybrid. It's just a cultivar group.
Jane Perrone 32:58
And of course, there will be listeners listening to this from subtropical and tropical parts of the world who can grow any old Tradescantia outside, which is another thing altogether, that's your opportunity to then grow them as they will grow in the wild where they'd be romping about on the ground.
Avery Rowe 33:13
Yeah. And you know, when you see pictures of them, of them growing in their native climate, and they just just amazing, you know, the way they spread along the ground. And it's like nothing in a pot.
Jane Perrone 33:23
Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's so useful to think of that illustration, because I think that will help a lot of people to understand why their plant isn't thriving.
Avery Rowe 33:31
Or even why it might, it might seem to not be thriving, when actually, it's probably doing fine, but it just doesn't look the way you want it to look.
Jane Perrone 33:39
Right. I guess this is the thing, people seem to be terrified of chopping plants. But I think with this one particularly, it's really key.
Avery Rowe 33:46
I sort of joke that, you know, if you want a nice looking Tradescantia, you just have to prune it every five seconds, you know, it's just part of the job. But if you can sort of get on top of that sort of regular small maintenance, then they are actually really easy to keep happy.
Jane Perrone 34:02
Well, thank you so much for all that wonderful information, Avery, and I'll stick various links in the show notes for people to go and check out all the work you're doing: that is brilliant to have your input and hopefully that will have cleared up some some confusion too along the way. So thank you very much for joining me.
Avery Rowe 34:19
Thanks very much for having me.
Jane Perrone 34:29
Thank you so much to Avery. What a fount of knowledge. And if you're a Patreon subscriber, you can tune into an extra leaf 91 now, which contains another chunk of chat with Avery where we go into another Tradescantia controversy about 'Nanouk' and discuss the finer points of ICRA and cultivar registration. There's a link for that in the show notes if you're a subscriber.
Jane Perrone 35:05
That is all for this week's show. I'll be back next Friday. I'm off to the Chelsea flower show this coming Monday and yes, I will getting all houseplanty with the various houseplant exhibits therein. So check out my Instagram on Monday because I should be bombarding it with lots of nice stuff. And I'll see you next Friday for a very showy episode. Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter, The Plant Ledger if you haven't done already, it's an absolute corker this week. Take care bye
Jane Perrone 35:53
The music you heard in this podcast is Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The road we used to travel when we were young by Komiku and Sundown by Josh Woodward. The as music was Dill Pickes by the Heftone Banjo Archestra. All tracks are Licenced under Creative Commons. Visit the show notes for details.
I chat to Tradescantia expert Avery Rowe about all things inch plant, and I answer a question about baby Saxifrages.
Patreon subscribers at the Ledge End and Superfan level can listen to An Extra Leaf 91 where Avery and I talk about the ‘Nanouk’ controversy as well going into more detail about cultivar registration.
This week’s guest
Avery Rowe is the International Cultivar Registration Authorities (ICRA) registrar for Tradescantia, which means he is spending considerable time trying to untangle the mess of cultivar names given to plants in this genus. Check out his site Tradescantia Hub for loads of in-depth Tradescantia info and informative posts on other houseplant matters including the ‘Pink Congo’ controversy. You can buy a selection of Avery’s Tradescantias on Etsy. Want to find out more about ICRA? Check out their website.
Check out the show notes below as you listen…
Tradescantia ‘Quadricolor’. Photograph: Avery Rowe.
Tradescantias have many common names, including wandering dude, inch plant, spiderwort and misère in French.
There’s another name that is sadly still widespread - wandering jew - but this is antisemitic, so I never use it on my podcast. Not sure of the reasons why? Here’s a couple of posts related to the subject, from Bloomboxclub and Hoyt Aboretum.
The Tradescantia genus contains 85 species, and is part of the Commelinaceae family, which is also home to other houseplants such as Callisia and Murdannia.
Tradescantia care
Tradescantia are semi-succulent, so the biggest risk is keeping the soil too damp. Wait until the soil is almost dry before watering, making sure to soak the soil thoroughly but don’t leave water in the bottom of the pot.
In nature, they are spreading, not trailing, plants - they creep across the soil rooting as they go. This is why the stems close to the soil lose their leaves and start to break off: in nature that is how they spread around.
The way to prevent a bare look at the top of the pot is to prune them frequently, stopping the stems from getting long. You can stick the cuttings straight back into the soil as they will root easily.
Lightwise, it depends on the species and cultivars involved: T. pallida needs good light to produce the best colour; T. zebrina can adapt to lower light levels, but will look best in bright like, and T. mundula and T. fluminensis are best for shadier spots.
Tradescantia grow well in most substrates, including hydroponics and semi-hydroponics. They benefit from regular feeding, but are not super-hungry plants.
Tradescantia naming
Tradescantia taxonomy is a bit of a mess, because not many researchers have specialised in the study of these species. The identity of T. ‘Quadricolor’ has been particularly contentious: the true ‘Quadricolor’ is an old T. zebrina cultivar that is rarely sold commercially, but a cultivar of T. mundula has also been given the same name, among others, but this one has pinkish cream variegation. The genuine ‘Quadricolor’ will look like a zebrina, with two wide silver bands on the leaves, with patches of white and pink overlaid - as per the photograph above.
Find out more about the controversy over ‘Nanouk’ in this post from Avery’s site: we also discuss this in An Extra Leaf episode 91, my Patreon podcast.
The Trad that Avery is still searching for is T. cerinthoides ‘Variegata’ - the last known sighting is here.
Saxifraga stolonifera babies. Photograph: Jane Perrone
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Lauren wanted to know how big Saxifraga stolonifera (strawberry saxifrage) babies need to be to propagate successfully.
The answer varies depending on the exact propagation method you choose: if you keep the baby attached to its stolon, the wiry stem that grows from the parent plant, you can place a really quite tiny baby on the surface of a pot of soil, hold it in place with an unfolded paperclip, and it will root.
You can also look around the surface of the soil in the parent plant’s pot and you’ll often find baby plants already rooting there, which you can remove by carefully teasing them away, rootball and all. If you want to cut the baby off and root it separately, make sure the baby is about the size of a conker. For more on this species, check out On The Ledge episode 104.
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
THIS WEEK’S SPONSOR
SOLTECH SOLUTIONS
Thanks to Soltech Solutions for sponsoring this episode of On The Ledge: without their help I couldn’t bring you all this planty chat. I love working with brands that I have tried out and can truly recommend, and that’s certainly the case with Soltech Solutions - I can tell you from personal experience that their lights are superior quality, sturdy, stylish and effective. Soltech Solutions fabulous customer service means you won’t be left in the dark when it comes to buying great growlights. Choose from their range of track lights, pendant style lights, or a simple bulb that will screw into most standard light fittings for setup that takes just moments.
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HOW TO SUPPORT ON THE LEDGE
Contributions from On The Ledge listeners help to pay for all the things that have made the show possible over the last few years: equipment, travel expenses, editing, admin support and transcription.
Want to make a one-off donation? You can do that through my ko-fi.com page, or via Paypal.
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CREDITS
This week's show featured the tracks Dill Pickles by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra, Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and Sundown by Josh Woodward.