Tag: Houseplants

Repotting Rhea

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Rhea has a name, because of course she does, she was my first 🙂 The first pothos cutting I grew on a moss pole, after moving back to America and losing my plant baby to the TSA. I took her as a cutting off of a beautiful pot of Epipremnum Aureum I bought from the grocery store. I have a few cuttings from this same plant thriving now as healthy individuals… but Rhea is the most spectacular. Each leaf she spits out is bigger and more wonderful than the last, the biggest pothos leaves I’ve ever seen indoors (in person). But today, the few leaves that were there when she was still just a cutting had finally whithered- whether from lack of sunlight or overwatering, I do not know, but she was already growing too tall for the UV lights I supplement her with. So I decided it was finally time to repot her.

First, I removed the leaves that were on the lowest part of her stem, about four or five. Then I used wire cutters to snip the plastic free and removed as much of the moss as I could without disturbing her roots. I wrapped them around inside a new pot and put fresh soil on top. She is now a third shorter, with more room to grow her roots as well as continuing her vertical ascent.

The small plant on the upper left is part of the same exact plant I took Rhea from. The magic of a moss pole!

Thai Constellation

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I finally got my hands on a baby tissue culture from a Thai Constellation Monstera… I’m SO EXCITED to watch this one grow. My other Monsteras are nearly taking over my apartment… which I love.

Basketing Pothos

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You snip off a long trailing vine of pothos, and propagate it in water. It roots within weeks, begging for soil. Now what?

Basket weave it! After planting the rooted end, lay the vine along the top of the basket so each node is touching the soil. Mist regularly, and as each node sends its own roots, that particular vine will grow heartier and more sturdy, and send out bigger and bigger leaves.

This is why I like to “basket weave” them in a circle, so I can cover as much of the surface area of the pot as possible. Pothos will do this wonderful bit of magic, where it arranges all of its leaves in such a way that they all get maximum exposure to sunlight. Its quite beautiful, how it fans out in a circle:

Bonsai Babies

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I’ve started a few from seeds, and one from a seedling about 3-4 months old, of a Celestial Fig. I have been pruning the Fig where necessary, the seedlings are not ready yet.

Little Pots

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I have two shelves of plants that are not aroids- as much as I’d love a greenhouse of everything, I have to put limits somewhere. So I stick to aroids… and these.

My favorite little pot is my string of pearls… I love this little succulent for many of the same reasons I love pothos: they are an exploring, vining plant, vibrant and interesting to look at, and very easy to propagate. I started with one $6.99 plant from Amazon, and now have three large and six tiny cups of the little beads spilling over everywhere. I really want to let them grow and get bushy, but I just cant resist plucking off the little strands of pearls and laying them on a fresh bed of soil, spraying them with water daily and watching them burst out with new life like little green raspberries.

Next, because they grow in similar conditions to the String of Pearls… I allowed myself to indulge in ten tiny Lithops, or “living stones”. These tiny, slow-growing desert-dwellers are a set of two bulging leaves that look like tiny brains. They are utterly charming. I lost 3 to trial and error, but these survived and are thriving in a mostly clay-leca medium.

Finally, I have a few Bonsai seedlings started… I’ll save them for their own post.

Pothos, Aroids, and Nomenclature Musings

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The aroids have my heart… pothos isn’t truly a pothos, anyway, and monstera deliciosa never was to begin with… nevertheless, whether it is a common Global Jade Pothos or a Thai Constellation Monstera or a swirling Heartleaf Philodendron… in my mind (and the minds of many others) these plants belong in a category together, and they are all more related than not… after all, they are all aroids.

Like the name suggests, “aroids” grow best in “air”; or, more specifically, they grow best in a medium that gives their roots ample room to breathe. A chunky, soil-less mixture of micorrhizae, coconut coir fiber, and large stones of perlite or clay leca balls helps these plants to recreate their natural tendency to “climb”, as they make trees their vertical substrate in the wild. The plants have two distinct stages: during the first, immature stage, the plants are recognizable to us as the internationally popular houseplants we know and love, growing heartily in all directions in search of support. The plant can exist in this stage indefinitely. If a vertical support is found, however, the plant will begin to climb, and subsequently enter a mature stage where it will dramatically change in appearance, and in very rare occasions it will even flower.

Pothos was categorized as “pothos” long before these botanists had ever seen the plant in its mature stage. It was later reclassified as Epipremnum Areum, and is not even in the Pothos family! However, if I show my “pothos” on the internet, people will quickly jump into the comments to say, “WELL, ACTUALLY… THAT ONE IS A PHILODENDRON.”

And to all these taxonomic fascists I would like to say:

You are RIGHT. It ISN’T a pothos… techinically. But also, technically… none of these are!

Words are symbols we use to communicate. Saying “I like Pothos” is still the easiest way to communicate to another plant lover what types of plants I like! We users of language are the ones who agree on accepted meaning. I’m going to stick to calling them all “pothos”, and move on.

Why do I like Pothos so much?? The way that it grows. Its vibrancy. The ability to adapt to so many different indoor spaces, unfussy, simple to grow. The ease with which it propagates. It rarely flowers, as it lost the need to, from an evolutionary standpoint. The plant propagates itself so easily, with an excessive growth hormone released in its juvenile stage that causes it to explore and search in all directions. I have only recently begun to grow them climbing on moss poles (post update on those to come) and it is fascinating to watch their progress: each new leaf on a climbing node is bigger, brighter, more splendid than any pothos leaf I have seen yet.

Mixed Pothos

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My latest experiment is mixing Pothos varieties together, all propagated from my mother plants. Here are two over spilling pots of Neon, Pearls and Jade, and Golden. Only one of the Monstera plants (not pictured) seems to be suffering, she was the smallest so maybe she was just overtaken too quickly.

My Home Jungle

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Every morning, every evening, I come to my little jungle corner, with my parrotlet on my shoulder, and admire all of my beautiful green things.

I am so excited to see all the new growth, every day, little by little: progress is perfection.