Field of Science

Showing posts with label croton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label croton. Show all posts

Fall color of a different sort


Well it's the last day of September, and summer like temperatures persist.  So our tropical houseplants can remain outside for awhile longer.  Because of this a tower of cucumber vines continue to produce and so do other summer garden plants: eggplant, tomato, zucchini.  And our gardens are quite green because of recent rains and the lack of cool temperatures, so chlorophyll continues to be synthesized so no fall coloration to leaves at all.  However one of our tropical plants (actually it belongs to the F1 but because she has a plant eating cat it continues to reside with us.) is quite colorful, a croton (Codiaeum variegatum), in the spurge or euphorb family.  Not only are the leaves variegated but that is combined with bright red coloration and the various combinations make the plant very attractive and colorful.  The flowers are rather small and insignificant.  It's the foliage that counts here.

Help with plant identification

Arjhay, a reader, needs help identifying a plant, actually just a plant image, a not very good image, so why expect flowers, and it's an exotic ornamental to boot, so it could be from anywhere.  Oh, TPP loves a challenge.  Arjhay wondered if this was mislabelled as "codiaeum croton"?  Yes, it most definitely is not a croton (Codiaeum variegatum).  That's a fun genus though what with one each of the 5 vowels (approximately koh-dee-aye-uhm).  Back to the plant image.  Firstly, notice the opposite leaves and the rather substantial nodes.  That helped narrow it down, and truly reject the croton, but it still took a day for the memory to click and send TPP looking in the right direction.  First reaction was a purple basil, but it's not minty enough (untoothed leaf margins), and hard to judge scent from an image.  Maybe some sort of Acanth, but that didn't seem quite right.  Ah, yes, an ornamental Amaranth, and don't ask me how that idea came to me.  So my best guess, well-educated, but a guess nonetheless, is Iresine diffusa, the aptly named bloodleaf, but really it's too purple, wine leaf would be better.  As you might guess based on the family, the floral display is not the reason people grow this plant, and it has not been common as a house plant for quite awhile now. TPP can't remember the last time he saw this plant.  Anyone out there with a better guess?  Does this seem right to the hive mind?