Gardendaze

Let’s face it: unless you live in the southern hemisphere, we are going into some dark, cold and dry times for our house plants. And what are house plants? They are mostly tropical plants that live somewhere else in their “other” lives (IRL if we were texting).

Many of the plants that do well in our homes actually are what we would call “understory” plants. If we are outdoor gardeners, we would probably call these “shade” plants but in the tropical forest, it might be a little more complicated than that.

Some of the plants have actually adopted cool features to help them in this “understory.” Some of the plants we grow in hanging baskets like philodendrons might actually grow on the trunks of trees.

Have you ever noticed that philodendrons have large, aerial roots? Those adaptations are to help them grow on trees “in the wild”–almost in the same way that orchids do. They also have terrestrial roots–on the same plant–to anchor them, either to the ground or in our case, in the pots!

But of course those aerial roots are completely wasted in our homes unless we are growing philodendron as a climbing plant–and most of us don’t do that.

There are a few varieties that stay low for awhile and then shoot up dramatically–this is one of them–you can see that it doesn’t quite know what to do with itself and I don’t quite know what to do with it!

This is philodendron neon. It stays quite low for a year or two–and then it shoots into the sky, like so. Don’t be fooled by the cute little images you see of it in 4 inch pots.

If you prefer a better behaved version, try its bronze cousin, “Prince of Orange,” which stays lower but needs bright light to maintain its nice coppery color. Since our bright light is gone now until spring, it is a little faded. That’s why the new leaf also looks stunted–they tend to do that if they’re not getting the light they need.

Come March, everything will resolve–the bright colors will return and the leaves will look much better too!