GET GROWING!
MY UMBRELLA PLANT PUTS ITS PREVIOUS AVATAR IN THE SHADE
Beautiful and sturdy, but also unremarkable!
By LADYBUG
After my umbrella plant reached what I believed to be its full size, it just sort of sat there. For a good many years.
Beautiful and sturdy, but also unremarkable, as it is a common enough houseplant. My friends who begged for cuttings from my other “exotic” houseplants would look at it and remark on how well it was doing, but that was about the excitement it generated.
Until recently, when one walked by it, stopped and came back for a closer look. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the branch with what were very obviously buds. A whole lot of buds! You know what they say about not really seeing something you see everyday? I hadn’t even noticed them.
But do umbrella plants even bloom? We looked it up and this is what we found on Wikipedia.
“Heptapleurum arboricola is a flowering plant in the family Araliaceae, native to Taiwan and Hainan Province. Its common name is dwarf umbrella tree, as it resembles a smaller version of the umbrella tree, Heptapleurum actinophyllum.
“It is an evergreen shrub growing to 8-9 m tall, freestanding, or clinging to the trunks of other trees as an epiphyte...The leaves are leathery in texture, shiny green, glabrous on the upper surface and somewhat lighter and matte on the underside.”
The description matches, but it was fascinating to learn that it would have grown taller, much taller, in its native habitat.
It is an evergreen shrub growing to 8-9 m tall, freestanding, or clinging to the trunks of other trees.
And then there was this about blooms. “Appearing from midsummer to early autumn, the flowers are produced in a 20 cm panicle of small umbels, each umbel 7-10 mm in diameter with 5-10 flowers. The flowers are hermaphroditic, having a colour ranging from yellow to green and a double perianth radial symmetry. They are composed of an entire annular calyx, five almost fully developed sepals, a corolla with five petals 2.5 mm long, with five stamens and five or six carpels that enclose the ovary.”
And this on fruits. Fruits! “The endocarp contains five seeds. The fruits ripen from late summer to early winter. They begin as orange glandular points. At maturity, they become red-violet. The fruits are inedible to humans, but may be consumed (and spread elsewhere) by various birds, parrots or other animals.”
According to an article on House Plants Expert by Mary Lloyster, “Unfortunately, we’re not able to get these in flower when grown indoors”.
Which would explain why it didn’t perform all these years – but not why it did, this year.
Whatever the reason, I check on the burgeoning buds several times a day and provide pictorial evidence for my friend who insists she is part-plant mother as she discovered the buds in the first place. For my part, I enjoy having someone to share the excitement over emerging stamens with.
This is the joy plants bring us, indoors or out.