Vietnam

On the spectrum of hardy aroids Pinellias fall somewhere between Arum and Arisaema with the attractive heart shaped leaves of the former and the hooded long-tongued flowers of the latter. Take that mix and shrink it all down and you get this lil cutie which reproduces itself by offsets and bulbils held on the leaves while not being as weedy as some other Pinellias. I have some qualms on calling this and the other larger marbled "form" the same thing but whatever the correct name it is still well worth having.

Found growing a shady mossy rock (much the situation I would choose if I were a plant) in North Vietnam this creeping semi-woody Gesner has some of the best foliage we've seen from the genus with purple-pink petioles, margins, and abaxial surfaces. No recollection of the flower but you can expect the usual dangling elongated foxglove corollas. For the tropical greenhouse or the coastal climate.

Our collection from Vietnam of this fascinating epiphytic genus.  This was growing on a tree trunk on a small limestone ridge populated by a mix of frost-tolerant and frost-intolerant species.  The hardiness of this remains to be tested here - maybe a warm zone 8b? - it made it through the admittedly mild first winter here so at least some frost hardiness.  Excellent drainage is likely key to improved hardiness and ours is in a tufa wall.  Spreads by creeping rhizomes and has dimorphic leaves with persistent basal fronds and fertile foliage fronds though only the latter have been produced on ours thus far.

Perhaps the most attractive of the many Scheffleras we grow with its dusty pinkish-purple petioles and multiple tiers of leaflets (unusually good floral display as well from which one assumes it takes its name). This combined with the usual jurassic looking stems and graceful chandelier canopy that attracts us so hopelessly to the genus is almost too much to bear. This is easily evidenced by our insistence on toting in and out of the greenhouse each year a massive display pot housing one of these handsome beasts. These are seed-grown from our plants from the recent first North American introduction.