Cautyx cadeaux caudu, Stefania erecta potato plant, the foot pilea peperomyoides, or
Nasturtium impost. There are so many different ways to refer to cautyx plants,
which I've recently learned cautyx is the correct way to pronounce it, and there's
a lot of confusion about these perplexing but fascinating plants brought into popularity by the
Instagram famous Stefania erecta with its cute, chunky, potato like body that sits
partially above the soil in its pot, and it sprouts these gorgeously delicate vines
of semi coin shaped leaves that twinkle this gorgeous bluish greenish tint when the sun
strikes just right. These plants are incredible and they're a beautiful addition to a
plant collection, but they can also be incredibly frustrating to take care of if
you don't understand why they are different than our usual tropical house plants. I
have wanted to do an episode on this particular type of plant, the Cats
Plant Forever, and realize that the perfect guests to dive deep on this topic
are longtime friends of mine and have been sitting under my nose this whole time.
So welcome, plan friends, Let's start growing joy. Welcome to the
Growing Joy podcast, where we not only learn how to care for plants successfully,
but how to simply and affordably use our plant babies to cultivate more joy
in our lives. I'm Maria, author of Growing Joy, the Plant Lover's
Guide to Cultivating Happiness, speaker, podcaster, and most importantly, an epic
plant killer turned happy plant lady. On Growing Joy, you'll find conversations about
plant care, plant community, and wellness through the lens of plants. Plant
care is self care. On Carolling Joy the podcast plant friends, I hope
you've had beautifully planty weeks and joyful weeks. If you have been enjoying our
episodes recently, can I ask you to just take two minutes and leave a
positive review for the podcast on iTunes or Spotify or your preferred podcast player.
I know it's so annoying that all the podcasters ask you to do this,
but the reviews are tremendously helpful to the show. It helps bump the show
up the charts, and the higher your podcast is on podcast charts. The
more your show can get in front of the eyes of even more plant parents.
So if you could just take two minutes to help the show grow,
I would be so thankful to you. Now on to today's episode the annual
Plant Daddy podcast X Growing joy Slash formerly known as Bloominger Radio. Tradition continues
as this is the third January in a row that I am joined by Stephen
and Matthew from the Plant DABTI podcast for an epically nerdy conversation on all things
codics. I love these boys. I hope you're subscribed to the Plant Daddy
podcast. It's a fantastic plant nerdy podcast. You will get to know the
boys and their incredible brains during this conversation, and they have so much more
experience in this type of plant than I do. My first foray into the
world of pots was actually this past year in twenty twenty two, with a
Stefania erecta, and I'd say that I had about a medium amount of success.
I figured out how to pot it up, It sprouted, it grew
leaves. The leaves were gorgeous, but I stumbled with the care. I
wasn't as consistent with watering as I needed to it's currently dormant, and I'm
really inspired after this episode to enjoy it once it awakens again for me and
have a better grasp on how to care for it. Stephen and Matthew and
I dive so deep not only on this well known plant of Stefania erecta,
but so many other varieties of cautex plants that are way more accessible and simple
to care for that you might not know about. So I hope this episode
informs and inspires you about this whole world of weirdo potato plants that are just
waiting for you to grow them and bring you some joy. Because I gotta
tell you, when your potato sprouts ps, it's not an actual potato.
It just looks like a potato, which is why I'm calling it that.
When it's sprouts and grows its first set of leaves, there's that is a
joyful moment and plant friends. So without further ado, here's Stephen and Matthew.
Well, welcome to Growing Joy. Plant Daddy's thank you. We're so
happy to be here. Cool rebrand. I know you your first appearance on
Growing Joy, the newly rebranded show, but your third visit over here to
my side of the podcasting world in January. We've got a standing January date
together. Yeah, we do. I love it. It's usually just a
good excuse for us to catch up. What the what the audience doesn't know
is we've already spent the past thirty minutes like catching up and shooting the ship
before we clicked record. Yeah, we did this last week too for our
let's go. Yeah, we're in a run out of time. I know,
it's just an excuse for us to gossip once a year. I love
it. Yep. I'm so happy to see both of your handsome faces.
These conversations are always my favorite on and offline, and I knew that you
guys were the perfect guests for this topic of caudex or cadeaux. Offline,
we realized I've been saying this word wrong the whole time. Your votes is
that it's pronounced caudex codex or cadisciform plants. However, as we know with
a lot of the other words that we've said on our own show, if
you know what you're talking about, if someone can understand, do you like,
that's all that matters, right right? And I will say that I
was corrected at a plant store, so you know what, we're all helping
each other, right, And you were corrected to say my conciation. Yeah,
I forget what I was saying, but they were like, oh,
no, caudisciform and caudex So you know, I think a lot of us
do that. Oh you were saying caudiform, weren't you? That sounds right?
Yeah? Okay, you know there's so many fancy words. I've realized
for those new listeners, maybe I should give you guys a chance to introduce
yourselves quickly so people can associate names to voices before we dive in. I'm
like, let's start talking about catayea? Sure? Do you guys want to
each give a brief intro to who you are and the beautiful plant daddies that
you are? Sure, I'll take a stab. We haven't done this in
a little bit, right Okay, So I am Steven, part of Plant
Daddy podcast. I tend to be a little bit more into the succulents and
carnivorous side of the indoor house plant world. And we've we've done a podcast
for three is years, little hiatus right now, anything else I'm missing?
You are really into like very specific plants and learning exactly how to grow like
a West Coast Australian, like rare species that nobody else has, but collectors
exactly. My result of your test, Maria, right was collector curious collect
Yes, the curate you are a curious collector. I should have everyone introduced
themselves as their plant parent personality. That's perfect. I mean, it does
capture it well, I think. And also, Stephen, you guys were
generous enough to have me on your show when my book launched, and I
feel like, although you might be a little bit more stoic, a little
bit more reserved, I think you also have a very beautiful plant care self
care sensitivity about you. Yeah, honestly, And I would think I was
only half aware of it. So the book helped. And I just told
someone the other day about your routine Maria, where you sit with your plants
for thirty minutes or whatever it is or was. That's good. I'm trying
to do that now. You are so proud of you. Oh yeah,
that such an impact on Stephen, I know. I mean, you know,
like your phone is your alarm. I wake up with it. I
looked at today, I'm just like, no no YouTube, no Twitter,
And I did it actually so Actually, I've gone down the rabbit hole where
I'm looking into all these different alarm clocks that have the sad lamps built in,
and I'm trying to optimize my bedroom right now so that my phone actually
gets left outside my bedroom because it's so addicting and tasty. So I appreciate
you sharing that, and I'm honored to be a part of your planting journey.
What about you, Matthew, Well, yeah, I am Matthew also
a plant Daddy podcast, and I get branded as more of the tropicals,
flowering plants person, which is largely true, but it does overlook the fact
that that was largely, i don't know, like a pragmatic choice based on
the apartment that I was living in when we started the show, because it
was just a better zone for me to grow leafy, tropical plants. I've
always loved flowering plants, so that's been a forgive the perennial mainstay of my
plant interests. But I do also love succulents, and I love bigger plants
than Stephen. I'm a huge fan of having like enormous architectural plants in my
home. I love all kinds of like collecting, so we're we're both collectors.
I'm a little bit of a completionist where it's like, well, if
I have one Huya, then I have to end up having like all of
the similar and different ones. Yeah, I'm currently sort of shifting in my
plant parents. I don't know identity a bit because my husband and I bought
a house a little over a year ago, and I now have my own
garden, and I've never had my own outdoor space that I could do with
what I want, like dirt that's on the ground that I can put plants
in. So the last few months while we've been on hiatus, like I
have become like the outdoor plant daddy, and I now know all about like
conifers and ornamental grasses and things that look like grasses but are not grasses,
and I am really diving in and I'm just so excited to have that.
And so therefore my houseplant collection has really suffered and I have to go through
and like do a lot of maintenance. I have to compost a lot of
things. I have some pest flare ups. So like, I'm kind of
in this transitional space right now in what my plant interests are. But I
think that when you kind of given another year for everything that I'm dealing with
going through kind of managing at the moment when all that dust is settled,
I think I'm going to have a much more manageable indoor plant collection than I
have the whole time that we were doing Plant Daddy podcast weekly. And I
think it's going to get a little bit back to some of my original roots
of what I really love and I'm interested in in terms of house plants.
Yeah, so that's where I'm at right now. Yeah, I definitely want
to dive in more, like I feel like these annual episodes for listeners who
have been listening to the show for the while, you guys have been repeat
guests on the show, this is an excuse for us to catch up at
the end of the episode. I want to dive into more where you guys
are growing because I have watched you both grow and change. We've all ebbed
and flowed and changed, you know, this year. So I definitely want
to dive in to more of that because I personally know and have seen photos
of your landscape and its epic. But before we do that, we need
to discuss cat ex plants. You both are different. You're both massive plant
nerds, super cerebral, super smart, and you know, are known for
doing these deep dives on plants. And I knew that I wanted to have
you guys on for caut ex plants because I feel like they are I feel
like a plant daddy plant. They're this super specific subsect of the house plant
world that you have to have this like kind of specific knowledge about how to
care for. They're kind of a separate thing. They're super kind of rare.
There's interesting varieties of them, and it's not necessarily a beginner moment.
And you guys, I feel like, are really good at that. And
I'm not so. I was sent to Stefania erecta. It just went dormant.
But you know that was the impetus for creating this episode. But for
that, can we zoom out and talk about I like to call them the
potato plant, but like, what the hell is a cat ex plant?
What makes a plant a catics plant? And why does it look like a
potato in the dirt? Well, the most just kind of basic answer to
that is that a cotex is just a thickened stem and it's at the base
of the plant. And you know, if this was you know, an
episode of our own Stephen and I would like hash out how much we have
to get into like the actual you know, like anatomical botany that makes a
cotex because technically it's a thickened stem. Sometimes it's a thickened root stock.
But in the colloquial sense that is what matters for those of us who are
just growing these plants for fun on our window sills, on our brow rex.
A cotex is just a thick base of a plant, and the reason
that they have this varies, but classically it's mainly just kind of like a
structure that allows the plant to store resource and either you know, generate lots
of new growth when the season is right for it too, or in the
case of fire, it allows new shoots to sprout out if the stuff above
was damaged. It's a storage structure. And so if we think about because
there's a lot of terms that are just kind of like grouped into you know,
bulb plants or like rhizomes, like those are all a thickened storage unit.
And so a bulb technically is like thickened leaves, and a rhizome is
a thickened you know, kind of stem root amalgamation, depending on kind of
how you're doing that. There's also corms, there's tubers, all of these
and like kind of the horticultural recreationalist sense, these oral cottexes, and you
can see coughtexes on plants that have a strong deciduous dorm and see like some
of the Stefania, well, like the Stefania or like some of the yam
family plants that will get into later, some of them actually remain evergreen like
ant plants, or some of these plants that might be dormant and deciduous when
the season's wrong or if they have to because of the growing conditions. Ultimately,
though, like when we're talking codecs plants, it's just when you have
like this nabby, thick growth at the base of a plant. This can
be fleshy, this can be woody. It's just a really cool architectural structure.
And there are so many plants that do this that there's no way for
us to just say, like codect plants belong to this family and this is
where they grow. It's instead an adaptation that you see in so many different
plant families, and you see it across the world in so many different kinds
of ecosystems and growing conditions. What it largely has to do with is like
when does a plant needs to have stored resources or where does it serve some
other kind of like biological benefit to the plant. So you call them potato
plants, and I think that's great because they do just look like rocks or
potatoes in a pot. Some of them look like, you know, naughty
stumps exactly, all sorts of potatoes. I would say, right, a
diverse variety of potato looks right. If you want to, you could grow
a sweet potato, which is in the morning glory family convolv Aca. I
believe that's a really diverse group. It includes like fine weed morning glories.
But the tubers that we eat that are sweet potatoes. We sometimes call them
yams, but in the United States, like yams are a different thing in
a different plant family. Sweet potatoes. You can grow that as a codex
plant. It's a vining, deciduous cotto. You have, Matthew, right,
I have, Yeah. You can grow them in bases of water,
you can pop them like Bond's eyes. There's a lot of really great,
interesting plants that you might not think of that. One of my favorite plants
that I consider a codex plant are Cyclement. I absolutely love cyclement and I
have a ton of varieties of them in my garden. They're all white flowering,
and because they come from a thickened corm, we're in a warm enough
climate that I don't have to bury it deep under the soil in order to
have it, you know, bare winter temperatures. That's basically a codex plant.
So yeah, it's an open term. Yeah, and I wanted to
touch on something you just mentioned their matthew like, there is some horticultural magic
or tricks happening as well, and a lot of the ones that would see
in stores and buy the plant in the wild won't necessarily have that codex formed
above the soil. So often with a lot of the species that are common,
like Adenium and others like that, what you do is as you replant
it, you actually pull up the plant a little bit expose some of that
chunky root, so you know that that happens much more quickly in cultivation.
You can control the shapes sometimes, so you know, if you google these
these plants online, you may not see or see the same coutex in those
pictures in a while. Yeah, particularly if you're looking at like adenium growing
in the wild versus like beautiful old plants that have been practically bonds eyed.
So yeah, so growers play it up, which I applaud because in the
wild, the actual codex portion of the plant would just naturally be buried underground.
You wouldn't be seeing it as much sometimes, yeah, yeah, And
for some of these plants, like there are a lot of cotex plants that
do grow the cotex like above the soil or above wherever they're growing, like
if you happen to be seeing them. There are epiphytic cot ex plants,
for instance. Some of these though, like the adenium, like, you
can create the look of a cotex by just raising it out of the soil,
like Steven's mentioning. So there are ways to cheat out this appearance on
plants, and there are also just some plants they are just naturally going to
do it. You can even take like a string of hearts like the serapeggio
woody eye, and if you let it grow long enough, the tubers that
it forms under the soil. I've seen photos of old plants that have large
tubers that sprout their leaves and vines, but you can just kind of like
let that sit on the soil, so you have this like really amazing knotted
shape that's completely exposed. You don't think of the Serapegia as a codex plant,
but it could be if you've chosen to grow and display it that way.
Yeah, it's interesting that when you bring up the bone side aspect of
it, because when you talk about curious collectors, like this could be a
type of plant that you really do a deep dive of and have a shelf
of really beautifully constructed exposed potatoes. As you were, Stephen, when you
were saying you got to expose the potato. Yeah, and I think you
know, for so many people, right, you know, there are a
lot Okay, I just said I'm sort of the succulent person. I'm sort
of less the tropical person. My read often is that Okay, with tropical
plants, you're gonna get it. It's going to fill out. So many
of those can look, you know, somewhat similar to each other, and
you want that, right, like that's what you're going for, maybe like
you want big and bushy and but often with these cotex plants, you can
get, you know, what people call like a specimen plant, more quickly
and easily, something really unique architectural after like just a couple of years.
In some of these cases, it can look like really a one of a
kind thing. So I think, you know, that appeals to a certain
set of growers, and it's also really cool, I think as a design
element because if you have something that's so unique that you've kind of grown up
and you've seen how it how it adapted in your care, you get to
pick really beautiful pots for them to really highlight, and like cot ex plants,
to me, you just you have so many design options. It's very
similar to bonsai in that regard, because the whole plant is an art piece.
It's not just about the flowers. It's not just about the foliage.
It's not just about the trailing or whatever. There's just outstanding architecture and beauty
in like how these plants have grown, because like Stephen said, they're one
of a kind, we've almost overhyped it at this point, we've allays well,
speaking of overhyped. Speaking of overhyped, Stephen, you brought up specimen
plants, So we've established what the codex is. I think what brought the
codex to popularity, especially in the houseplant world, is you know, the
instagram famous the sexy Stefania erecta, And I do just want to interject and
say a lot of people knew about codexes before this, but that is certainly
the plant that made it like a mainstay in the general house plant world totally,
and all of a sudden, and it was also like I feel like
it was there was a moment where all of a sudden, I was seeing
all of these videos on Instagram, all of these YouTube videos of people with
their Stefania erectas, the gorgeous trellises they were putting and very specimen like.
Right, the trellis becomes a part of it, and you know, the
growth habit of the vine and all of it just became this moment. And
for me at least, that's really when I started doing the deep dive and
it's this, you know, once again, it's this like little potato and
I got one, and you know, once I've got it, and I
was holding it and it had no roots and a little sprout and I was
just like looking at it, thinking, oh my god, this looks like
none of my other plants. What the hell am I supposed to do that
with this? Like furiously you know youtubing. So why do you think everyone
loves it so much? Like why do you think that plant in particular became
so popular? Yeah, if I were to opine here, I think we
were in a round leaf moment a little bit. We were coming off Alia
peperomioides. This was another round leaf and the boys right, and you know,
there's something really special about that peltape leaf shape where the petiole attaches right
into the back of the center of the leaf blade, like an astertium or
a lotus the pilea. Yeah, yeah, so circular, right, because
there's always like degrees of that, and like we're just mentioning this is a
way to get a specimen plant relatively easily, you know, maybe and affordably.
Yeah, yeah, at that point. So I think that's kind of
why they took off. I do think, you know, maybe some of
the struggles that can sometimes add right, because there's online chatter about oh my
gosh, how do I plant this? Like you're saying, Maria, like
what's up and what's down? Matthew and I both I don't know if we
struggled with it, but one of us I thought had buried ours upside down
the first time. If that happened, it was you because I had a
little bit of visible growth like scars from where I could see that there was
previous growth, but it's not super obvious, and like I pay close attention
to that stuff, and like I'm particular that way, but I could really
see that being a problem for people. And I don't know if they all
reliably show where their growth has come out. I've dealt with bulb tuber rhizomaceous
corn plants in my garden and it's like I can't tell what is up,
Like what is the upside on this right circular cool leaves? And maybe a
little bit of mystery. That's that's gonna be my guess, and a little
bit of mystery, you're right, how do you plant it? Etc.
For me, it was a lot like with the Pylea peperumioides and various other
like trained status plants that I've fallen in love with and sought out. It
was the photos on Pinterest, it was the photos on Instagram. Yeah,
you see these beautiful like blue green, powdery glaucous leaves and there's just tons
of them and they trail beautifully over these like delicate, little like Japanese ceramic
pots, like there's an esthetic there. But Steve and I hope I'm not
like taking a moment away from you. But we covered this plant early in
Plant Dutty podcast because I fell in love with them, you know, Steven
Stefania. I was like, we have to get this plant because it's like
sort of like your name. So I ordered two of them and I knew
what the photos looked like, and then we started growing them for an episode,
and there was terrible information on the internet, and we figured out how
to be like quote successful with them. But for the rest of Plant Dutty
podcasts, we sort of used Stefania as our general stand in example of a
trend status plant that might not really be worth the hype and doesn't really perform
the way that you think that it will and it's not going to look the
way that you wanted to even if you're growing it what you think is right.
Like, it was not the easiest plant, and it did not live
up to the visual expectation that I had sort of put on it. If
that makes sense. What made it not live up to the hype for you?
Was it the dormancy, was it the difficulty? What about it didn't
deliver? You know, I think we both probably have takes here. For
me, what I was trying to get was sort of more compact growth.
I know, there were really cool trellises and stuff that you were seeing online,
but for me, it was such a long, viny growth and the
leaves were kind of sparse, and the leaves are sort of the star of
the show for me. So I kept trying to get it to just sort
of form above the plant, and I was thinking, oh, maybe if
I have super highlight, that will happen. There were some questions around the
soil for a while too, so you really I was a little bit worried
as mine was getting going. Was I thinking, Okay, do I have
the right soil mixt there's no consensus online about how to plant this yet,
and if I do it wrong, I could be you know, I could
have this potato sitting here for six months, and then you know, my
shelf sprace is kind of precious in my house, like so lack. Only
a potato in a pot doesn't take it A ton of room. But that
was really something that a lot of people encountered, was this potato that they're
like, is it alive? Right? And you know, you can figure
this stuff out. But I just think that for some reason, I thought
I was getting this, you know, plant that was a bit more set
it and forget it. So, you know, maybe it's an expectation issue
on my side too. I think that for me, it was very much
what Stephen is saying. The leaves were much smaller than I was kind of
anticipating. It's hard to tell scale in photos that you see on social media
a lot of the time, and you know, obviously people are staging these
to look beautiful, and a photo on Instagram that's twenty five thousand likes it's
a beautiful plant. But like, we really struggled because the initial care information
that we were reading was like, you know, water when dry, it
was a gritty soil, protect them from bright light. They don't tolerate it.
And we found that they actually want a lot more water. They don't
mind a much more rich and kind of heavier substrate. They like to stay
fairly moist when they're in leaf. They like bright light, Like yeah,
like you know, the brightest light that we can offer indoors here is not
that strong compared to a lot of the rest of the country, and especially
like further south. But I grew mind to best success on a south window
sill, like completely unprotected, and even then the leaves were fairly scant.
It's not a twining plant, so the vine doesn't grow up and want to
twist around its support, so you have to kind of like wire it on
a bit. You have to kind of like manipulate it to follow the trellis.
That takes a little bit of styling, and I kind of like the
overall like wild look of having a fairly compact shoot coming out of the bulb,
the corm, the tuber, and then having those round leaves cover it.
But even the best that I ever got with it, it was not
pretty enough to really compete with the nicest plants that I had seen on social
media. So that was my thing of like, all right, this is
handsome, but like not nearly as good as what I thought it would be,
And I would rather grow nastertiums for this. If I want this look
like, I'll just put nastertium seeds in my garden and forget about them,
Well, I would not go that far, but Stevin wouldn't. Yeah,
I would say, like if you know that stuff you know we've just said,
and you sound up and you feel up for that, then I would
still go for it. You know. I wouldn't maybe like import them like
we did then and you know, do all of that. But if you
see one around, I think they're still worthwhile, you know, if you
know all of that going in. I'll also say that as much as people
you know still love these plants, like, by all means, I agree
with Stephen, like collect them if you want them, just you know,
media your expectations to prepare to work a little harder than you thought that you
might have to. But there are so many more like complicated care tips for
these plants. Now, one of our lowal specialty shops that really focuses on
rare plants had them like like a bucket of these bulbs, and they had
really detailed care information about keeping them warm from the bottom, about covering the
bulb in the pot while it was waking up to sprout, keeping the humidity
high. There were a lot of very like kind of precious details that I
don't know. I'm just I'm going to put it out there that maybe those
are things that have worked for some people, but it's more like coincidence or
happen or like it happens to work, but you don't need to go to
that. We both found that bottom heat worked, So putting them in an
area where the soil itself is warm helps a lot, and giving them strong
light helps a lot. I don't think it's really needs to overthink these really
like elaborate care things they're forgiving. Like if they grow up a bit and
then they kind of don't do their thing, you can literally prune that vine
off and start over like just and it'll keep growing. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. I think it sounds like if we go with if we're going along
the line of the plant parent personalities, you know, a mindful plant parent,
maybe someone that really wants to like be up in their plants business all
the time. This could be a great option for because it is it sounds
like it's a much more high maintenance plant. So two things for me and
my experience with the ERECTA three things. Number One, when that potato showed
its first sign of growth, it was incredible, Like the weight when you
have a plant that really experiences that dormancy and it wakes up for you and
it starts growing. That is a very fun couple of weeks in your household.
So I really enjoyed that, right, Like I loved because I don't
have a lot of houseplants that experience that leaf loss, So for me,
it was really interesting. But you know, the leaf it's it's gone to
sleep for the winter. And now I do have a potato in a pot
amidst all of my beautiful tropical foliage, and like does it bother me?
Know? But from an esthetic point of view, like how does it look?
I don't know. And when you talk about light, I found that
mine did its best when it was under a grow light, so under like
really optimum light, which I thought was really interesting. So I think we're
giving this information because I think a lot of times you see these plants on
Instagram, you immediately get it and then, like all three of us experienced,
you're like, wait, holy shit, what did I just commit myself
too? So you know, if this calls to you, go for it.
But the next question I have for you is say I want the codic
style, but maybe I don't want that much of a high maintenance plant.
Are there other types of the Stefania genus that maybe are easier to care for?
Slash other genus in general, other species in general. So I would
say within Stefania, another one that I really love is kawa kawasekii is probably
how that is pronounced. It used to be called Stefania nova. In my
mind, care is pretty similar, but it doesn't make the same sort of
vining and you know, hanging and creeping sort of growth habit. It's a
lot more compact. You'll get one or two or three super showy leaves.
They're really blue. They're so beautiful, right, And I think when I
was, you know, wanting Stefani erecta, I was actually wanting something a
little bit more like this one, kawasekii. So I would I would throw
that one in, you know, at least within Stefania the genus. Otherwise,
there are tons of great options. Ant plants is one that we were
going to mention, that form of big cat x amp plants. Also having
a moment, I'm seeing more of the amtplant lately, even just in garden
centers, you know, and that's something I want to talk about a little
bit later, but I love ant plants, Like that's that's something that we're
going to come back to you, because yes, you do love ant plants.
Yeah. That one surprised me actually, Matthew, because I'm like,
oh, you know what, this is such a me one. I don't
really know if Matthew would like, you know, ant houses as a plant,
but I would love to have a form of caryam like that would be
so cool. So diascoria is another one. Those are often called like elephant
plants, and these ones that you know, you've probably seen them around if
you've looked at different codex you know things before, been to like a succulent
shop or something like that, and I feel like they're kind of always there.
They're never super common. They can be huge and have these really like
kind of geometrical like jagged, kind of big big codexes that they form.
They kind of remind me of like a tortoise shell, like a really old
tortoise that has you know, kind of ridges on its plates. Yeah,
and really there's so many other codex options. The other one I'll just toss
in is one called big foot plant. This is one that again it's like
you can kind of always find it online. It's never super common, but
it grows really quickly. It's been a lot more forgiving care wise. I
think if you want to try, like the big caught experience, one that's
going to kind of grow quickly for you. It's going to shoot up leaves
and then it will go to you know, it'll go deciduous and then it
will come back bigfoot plant. I can get the genus name. I think
it's Gerard Dance this, but big football. We'll put them all on the
show. Notes. Right, that's another good option. I want to dive
into like general codex care with you guys. But when we were talking offline,
I remember you talking about like a really negative aspect of stefania erecta that
I didn't know that much about. But apparently there's a lot of illegal harvesting
going on. So if you are going to buy a stefania erecta, what
do you need to know in terms of who you're buying from and the legalities
of that. Right, this was a tough one. So we made our
episode really early into our podcast. Would I want to say, maybe a
year later someone brought this to our attention, and think that person in Europe.
There was a study that I think some plant retailers kind of funded and
started just to make sure that these Stefania plants that were coming from I think
mostly Southeast Asia were being you know, sustainably harvested or like what the story
was, because so many were coming at once, right, like it was
such a fat everywhere. And what they found was that really probably many or
most Stefania plants that you can buy, especially big ones, are probably wild
harvested and wild collected. So that is sticky, right. And this article
goes on to say that Stefania erecta is you know, it's almost a weed
in some places, so it's not necessarily you know vulnerable or you know,
endangered or something that would really you know, you know should scare us,
as you know, plant enthusiasts. But I do want to jump in and
just mentioned that the passenger pigeon used to be, like I don't know if
it was the most numerous vertebrate on the planet or just the most numerous bird
on the planet or North America, like whatever that statistic was. There were
so many passenger pigeons at a couple decades before they went extinct that no one
thought that they could ever devastate the wild populations of them, and here we
are in a world that hasn't had passenger pigeons for decades. Yeah, I
mean exactly right. So that should not just make you know, in my
mind anyway, that does not make this like okay forever. I would just
urge you, if you're buying it, ask your plant seller, you know
where it's from, you know, try to inquire. I think it's been
common enough over here that we should have people cultivating them here now, or
we should at some point. Part of the study said that the codex does
take a long time to form, right, so they may look smaller and
you may, you know, maybe they don't know how to grow them quickly,
you know, yet, things like that, because it's kind of a
newer plant to collecting the other species, like the one I mentioned Kawaski.
That one I guess is more rare in a wild. So honestly, if
I were buying one again, I would probably look locally. I don't know
if I would order like we did, Matthew, because we didn't you know,
we didn't know this before, and just to fully own that, but
I'd also be worried about buying them locally, because if they're importing them,
you could still be contributing to this. So like ask your local seller where
did you source these? Yeah, you have to inquire, but I would
just really try to do your research with this genus. Yeah, definitely.
One of the reasons that it is like kind of questionable to own some of
these plants in some ways is because the codex doesn't really form if you grows
some of these plants from cuttings. Like a lot of these plants can be
propagated through tissue, but if you take a cutting get it to root viably.
I'm honestly not sure if this is something that they do with Stefania,
but just in general for cotex plants, the codex is a mechanism of the
plant's development that happens when it is grown from seed. So there are are
many times that you can't vegetatively propagate a Cotta sufform plant in order to have
it show a proper codex, like the reason that you're growing it. You
can't just fake it for some of these things. So if you're looking to
get like a really mature kawisekii that has like the size and the shape of
the codex that it can support more than one or two leaves for its active
growing season. You're probably buying a plant that is quite old and that has
been harvested from the wild. Because I don't want to contradict what Stephen said,
but I don't know if we are at a point yet where I don't
know either yeah, like local, you know, to whatever area you're you're
in. I don't know if there are growers who have been growing these from
seed and developing the codexes that are the size that we're seeing for sale and
having like domestically produced seed grown plants. So I also don't know how you
can really verify like yeah, like it's just sticky and it's worth looking into.
And I personally think that for a lot of these Codex plants, there
are some really great ones that are very easy and fairly quick to grow from
seed, which means that there are Codex choices that are very popular, very
available, not very expensive in the house plant market that you're almost going to
be able to guarantee has not had any devastating ecological poaching impact. Basically,
Yeah, something I want to explore on the podcast this year and listeners if
you are interested in this, please DM me and let me know. But
I spoke at a really large horticulture conference industry conference a couple of years ago,
and I was shocked at how little we as the consumer understand about the
grower to seller to plant shop experience. Like, the horticulture industry is this
huge industry that we don't really know that much about. And I really want
to kind of explore how growers conduct their business, how you grow a plant,
how you get a catic seed, how you secure one, how you
grow it, then who the distributors that it's going to, Like I just
think that's also fascinating. But anyway, we're here to talk about cotics plants,
so that's an episode for later. So care what do we need to
know in terms of general care for if we're taking home a coutics, whether
it's one of the Stefania's or another coutics. Are there some kind of high
level things that you need to know for these types of plants that are going
to differ from our normal tropical house plants. Yeah, and I think that
this is this is a really simple kind of plant, Like we're talking about
the challenges of growing them. But I want to just throw out that if
we're talking about these as being quote high maintenance plants, it's not because they're
caring needs are super exacting. It's just because they have like specific little attributes
that have to be observed. They have growth cycles that do things at different
times of year. So in a very broad general sense, just research the
individual plant that you have, because the care will vary quite a bit between
them. But with all of that said, the general parameters are that they
often like well draining soil. They want to have pretty good amounts of light.
Like I haven't had any codex plant that hasn't tolerated at least a few
hours of direct sunlight on a window sill, or ones that would prefer to
have all their full sun you know, perhaps outside under grow lights whatever.
They all want good light. A lot of these plants either are adapted for
ecosystems where they have to conserve moisture because it's more of a desert arid environment,
which means that they're going to get high, strong light, or they
come from areas that have high monsoon season rains and low dry season moisture availability,
and then when they're ready to grow, they'll shoot out scrambling vines that
go and they try to reach as much light as they can to store it
more resource for that codex to grow larger, to produce fruit, flowers,
everything that it needs for coming seasons. So don't underdo the light for these.
Some of them might burn if you put them directly into full direct completely
like unforgiving Texas or southern California your Arizona sun. But in a general sense,
these are fairly high light plants, and they're going to look their best
and grow their best and stay the most compact with good strong light. Many
of them want good amounts of water while they're in act of growth because this
adaptation they put out on foliage, they put on whatever else they're going to
do above ground seasons where they have the resources. So if you've got like
a climbing onion and it's putting out foliage, water it pretty heavily. You
want that soil to barely dry out between waterings. You almost never find a
codex plant that wants to sit in water or have really super heavy, unbreathable
substrates. But in many cases, like just a general potting soil is going
to work for some of them. You are going to want to incorporate some
pear lights and pumice corsand grit, but a lot of them actually want a
fair amount of nutrient rich compost so that you can kind of you get the
most bang for your buck in that active growing season. So research the individual
plant for sure, because there are exceptions to this. But when the plants
in active growth, give a good light, give it as much water as
it wants. If you start to notice foliage withering or dying back, it
portions of the plant are dying back when you think it should be actively growing,
that's your sign that you're triggering a dormancy and should be watering it more.
Right. Yeah, Yeah, Like I agree with all that Matthew to
paint with the broadest brush. It's like, start with how you care for
succulents in your house and then just make sure there's plenty of water when it's
an active growth. Love this all, Okay, two questions when watering.
I remember when I was first potting up my Steffania erecta. I was like,
do I only water the soil around the cottucks? Or am I putting
the water on top of the cottucks and I'm letting the water stream over the
bulb and then go into the soil. What are your practices all right?
So me first, Yeah, I just water around because I'm thinking of it
as like a succulent sort of right, So I'm like, oh, you
know what, I don't want there to be water in little nooks and crannies,
You're no. No, I water around it, and I don't think
I ever let it touch the cott itself if I can help it. But
I now, really that doesn't surprise me because like you and I are similar,
are you do Do you do that too well? I usually use like
a little like squeeze bottle, you know, like the kinds of like soft
plastic bottles, Yeah, a restaurant or I think of them as like tattoo
shop or like laboratory bottles. But I love those for like watering my small
plants because I can target exactly where that water goes. And so I water
around the outset of the pot if I've let it dry a lot. We're
all familiar, like super dry soil kind of like shrinks pulls away from the
side of the pot. So if you water around the edge like that water
is just draining through to the saucer. It's not really soaking in a lot.
So if I have a plant that is drawing a lot between waterings,
I do squirt that water like around the cotex. I'll get the whole cottex
wet. Because in my mind it's like these plants are from Thailand or you
know, wherever, Like I'm sure they're going to get rained on. Yeah,
I don't know, but like that way, I know that the water
is running around the outside of the codex and then it's soaking in like right
around the base of it. If I was really worried about some particular cotex
plant rotting, I would probably not do this, or I would plant it
slightly higher above the soil than it wants, and then I'd put like a
medium fine gravel top dressing just on the top of the pot so that it's
elevated off of the soil substrate, so that it is I am watering the
codex itself is not sitting against something that's wet, but it's like supported by
the gravel. It gives a good drainage zone. That's like a really precious
thing that I do sometimes that it's hard to then tell what the soil moisture
level is if it's covered in gravel. But like there's there's ways around this,
and I actually don't think I don't think that it matters too much if
you get your cotex. Don't worry if your cotex is one that's like really
craggy, and if you're growing it in a high humidity, low airflow environment
and it's never going to dry and there's water collecting in cracks and crevices,
yeah, that's going to invite rot. But like how many people have that
condition in their home for their plants. There are some cotex plants that I
know that kind of grow like a kind of like a jelly donut kind of
style codex or like a like a red blood cell where it's a little indented
in the center. It's not classically a codex. Yeah, Like there's some
codaciform bogonias and like tubrisk bagonias that aren't really caught ex plants, but they
will have that indentation in the center so that if there's water that will collect
and that can cause rot of new growth as it comes out. But you
know, just just take that into account as your water. You don't want
water to collect in the cotex See. This is fascinating to me, and
I love panels like this because we literally all have different experiences. Stephen doesn't.
For the most part, Matthew is still a little controlled about it.
I started so precious with my Stefania erecta. I only watered the little strip
of soil. I was like, so, but I'm a pretty chaotic water
I don't have those fancy bottles that I that I know exactly what you're talking
about I have. I have a watering cam with a skinny spout. But
there were a couple of days where I was watering just chaotically, and I
like, I set my plants up. They're all on trays that whatever they're
sitting on is not going to get wet because I know that I'm going to
get water on whatever they're sitting on all the time. And so there was
one day where I was just like, but also, everyone's environment is different.
It's thirty percent humidity in my house. I do not grow my stefania
under a dome or with a humidifier, Like my stefania has adjusted to my
house right. So one day I was like, this would be kind of
fun if I like made it rain all over this plant and like had a
waterfall moment and nothing happened. So now I water as like chaotically as all
my other plants, and it doesn't. I mean it grew, it grew
until it didn't. But I think that's very interesting. I would not overthink
it, and I think I love that. And I think when when you're
thinking about rot, because this plant that has this large mass is set up
for rot, it's more about knowing the actual cotics, if there are those
holes where water is going to collect inside of it, or it's more about
the substrate because if this that's what I stressed about was I was like,
I have this potato sitting on this moist soil, how is the bottom not
gonna rot? But also I got my cotics with no roots, and so
I was like, how are roots growing on this thing? And I knew
that water and you know, the change in having the humidity and having the
water is probably what also triggers the roots to start to grow. So it's
all interesting to me. So that's a really good thing to mention about,
like where do the roots grow, how do they come out? They obviously
need to have the presence of moisture, to tell them to grow roots.
But my first go of growing my stefania, we also tend to grow these
and fairly small pots. So side note, buy some those little squeeze bottles,
Maria like it is gonna be. Yeah, like they're they're they're they're
cheat. You can get a six pack of them. Book, Like,
when you're growing plants in a fairly small pot, because they want to have
like you know, confined roots. You don't want the contex to be like,
you know, two inches in the center of a ten inch pot.
When you're using a watering can, even with a narrow spout, it's hard
to get the soil wet. So get that little squeeze bottle. It's very
easy, and you can do it regularly so that it like drains through.
It's good. But I had to adjust my soil recipes because these are succulents.
They want to dry a bit between waterings, so I use gritty course
mixes. I am a lazy waterer. I have had up to four hundred
plants at a time. I have five less than that right now. But
it's hard to be moved enough times that I trust that that census. Yeah,
it's it's hard for me personally to water often enough to keep them in
good growth with a really gritty substrate. So my climbing onion, my bowie
volubilis, and my stefania both kawasaki e and the nice work you landed both
of those pronunciations nations and also do that. Wow, it's like some tongue
exercises or something. It's some tongue exercises. You know what bowie of volubilis.
Okay, I'm gonna have you say that, Okay, Maria in about
five minutes. Random. It's a fun little word, and I love the
way that Summer rain Oaks says it. She like really punches the word.
Um. But I started transitioning to more moisture retaining typical like foliage plant generic
potting soil because I knew that they would dry enough and the roots would be
healthy enough with my watering habits, so like make sure that they have enough
moisture retention. We're also going to be slammed into dormancy more often, less
consistently. Like it's it's not great. I was just going to say regarding
dormancy, just to put this out there, I have not had a dormant
stefania. In a couple of years, they're growing really, Oh tell me
more. Yeah, so I just but I mean, you know this is
you know, we have different plant personalities Matthew and I a little bit right,
like you're okay, you set up your plants, right, Matthew to
have them water like watered less frequently, because you know, that's how you
do it. For me, I have a really strict schedule where I'm like,
okay, I know Monday and Thursday on my watering days, and I
can kind like get it all done and know that I'm on top of it.
If I watermine once a week, I keep it under the grill lights.
I have a pretty consistent fertilizer routine too, or like I'll just mix
in fertilizer in the water. Under those conditions, it's just stayed flowering,
Like leaves will die back. I'll get another shooting a flowering story with foliage.
Yeah, so I think you can get there. Yeah. Stephen has
created like permanent summer for his plans, exactly unending summer. And I think
just to say, like, you know, we've been saying, Okay,
there's some pitfalls, like in the rest of this episode, right, but
you can get there and yeah, yeah, Now what I wanted to say
about growing the Steffani at the very very first time when it was in that
tiny pot, I actually sad story. It was the most gorgeous like antique
Japanese bonds eye dish and have the most beautiful like malachite green glaze. I
spend way too much money, but I love that pot. It fell and
it broke, and I was devastated. I was angry at YouTube. Stephen
was something that I want to put that pot in my will so that like
when I die, Stephen gets it. Oh my god, I love that.
It was literally the most beautiful like piece of ceramic I've ever owned.
But regardless, with the Stefania being like now in a pile of pot chards
and dirt on the ground of my apartment, I was surprised to find that
it had two roots. It had grown vine and a couple of small,
pitiful leaves. It had two tiny roots coming out of it that had branched
a bunch. So if you're trying to get your plant growing, like,
if you can keep that soil lightly evenly moist, that's going to really help
you grow a lot more roots out because some of these kind of sufformed plants
that come from like a potato that you can ship, like you know,
a dormant little knob, they'll grow roots in different ways. Some cyclaming grow
roots just from the top, some growing just from the bottom, some grow
from all around. So if you really want to get into some of these
plants and get them growing really well, see if you can find a little
bit of information about where the roots grow out of the specific one that you're
growing, because that can vary a little bit and it might just change how
you pot them up, how you get them going, and it'll probably benefit
the plant in its first growing season once it wakes up for you if it
has that really good chance to establish a root system immediately. Also about your
pot, did it shatter or did it just break into one? Or oh
because iote okay, I recently broke a pot that was very meaningful to me
and I actually ordered online. Did you get that Japanese repair kit? Yeah?
Yeah, the repair kit with the gold And that's on my to do
list for my holiday break off to just spend some time learning how to do
that. I have this alabaster pot or something I did the same thing to
it. Very curious to hear how it turns out for you. I think
it's so fascinating that you're right. If you eliminate the changing of seasons,
you don't need to have your plant go dormant. But if it does go
dormant, what do we need to know about these plants when it's time for
them to kind of take a bait, take a beat, go to sleep,
You walk in, there's a potato in your pot. Yeah, like
sometimes exactly exactly what do you do? Some of these plants, it's an
obligatory mechanism of others, it's not a mechanism that they observe at all.
And for some apparently it's kind of like up to the plant's whims and fancies
or the growing conditions that you've subjected them to. For me, my stefania,
even giving it consistent water, growing on a window so where it got
natural daylight levels and lengths, that triggered dormancy for it. From what I
can tell, it's not like I change my watering. The leaves just you
know, yellowed and fell off eventually. But that's honestly one of the things
that makes context plants to me a little bit more of a collector's plant,
and it adds to that sort of like additional challenge or like higher maintenance plant
kind of you know, quality that we're assigning to them. Because you have
a part time plant, you have a plant that is sometimes in beautiful foliage
and then other times of the year it is a potato or it's just like
this naked lump. It is rugged and architectural. Okay, architectural, yeah,
it is rugged and architectural. But like, let's say what you're like
me, and you have window sills not with drapes or curtains but instead plants,
and so like, if I have a couple of trellises of some really
beautiful, like you know, climbing yam plant, that's providing me some esthetics
in my home, and it's providing some screening from people peering in my windows.
That's not going to be there all year round. So you have to
kind of like alter your your decor how you've style these plants. Some of
them want, you know, dryer, cooler conditions. Some of these plants
really don't need any kind of seasonal change at all, and they might still
trigger these dormancy. So this is the period where you don't water them very
much. It's super easy. They don't even need light because they're not photosynthesizing.
So for some of these plants, you can literally just kind of like
take those pots, put them in a cool, out of the way spot.
You don't want it to be too warm to trigger them into like active
growth even if you're not watering, but give them, give them a little
bit of water sometimes for some of them. I killed my steffani erecta because
I didn't water it at all over its dormancy, and then I started watering
it again and I was like, oh, this is a husk, Like
there's no more roots. Yeah, oh look all the roots dried up.
There's not even an interior to this cottex anymore. It's all yeah, and
it's that looked like rat It wasn't. It just didn't get any water.
So some of them, also, the roots will just die, and that's
fine because they'll sprout new ones. That's why you can ship them that way.
But if you want the codex to not use up reserves just trying to
sustain it self for another seasonal growth, do a little bit of research about
how much off season off growing season water it might want. Some of these
may want a bit or else they'll be completely depleted and withered before they wake
up. For some of these plants, like I'll put adeniums in this group,
they might just kind of go deciduous, but they're a little photosynthetic.
The stems might be silvery, they might be greenish. You probably still want
them to have some light. But when they're not an active growth, you
hold off on the water a lot, you hold off on fertilizer. It's
not really that tricky. It's mostly about just remembering to give them enough water
that they don't suffer before it's time to wake up, and then keep an
eye on them because there could be some signal like either light levels or heat
levels independent from water access that could trigger them to grow. Because these store
moisture for the plant to resume growth. If the daylight's become longer, suddenly
in the plant is able to sense that it might begin to grow new shoots
before water is there, because that's how they're adapted in the Wildlike of daylight
you know, increases, they know it's monsoon seasons. Soon as they want
to get going. Make sure that you're paying attentions so that if they begin
to wake up, then you can start giving them what else they need.
In addition to their higher light, they're more consistent temperature patterns, all of
that. That's what I would say for their general care. Love that.
Okay, So let's call this section Stefania but better. That is an homage
to Joshua Weissman if you guys follow him on YouTube of the Chef. But
what are other cot ex plants that might be a better choice for people who
are looking for a lower maintenance plant or just like easier success with plants.
I know, Matthew, we should begin with you discussing the ant plant because
I know you have a very strong opinion about this plant. So why don't
we start there? Well, we start there because these are to get Matthew
about it. These are in the coffee family. Actually, like there's I
did right, classic Seattle guys talking about their coffee plants. And the term
ant plant is broad. It's not a taxonomic term. It's a term to
describe plants that have developed relationships with ants too, have like hollow portions or
something that ants can inhabit. So there's like in the Codex right there,
are tunnels, there are places for these ants to live and in the wild
it actually happens. For me, this was kind of really no no.
I saw it on my honeymoon when I was in Costa Rica. I saw
real life ant plants in the junglo is so cool. They are really neat
and so it's a it's a relative of the gardenias and the coffees, and
they have this like really impressive codex that just grows as an epiphyte. They
have kind of like you know, white brittle roots that cling to their surface.
In the wild, they get rained on so they need high amounts of
air on their roots, but they also get very consistent moisture. Some of
them are good with drought, some of them for for more consistent water.
So again, you do have to kind of research the individual species that you're
growing. So I first learned about ant plants when I was like doing my
first vivarium build back in like two thousand and seven or something, because they
were being listed by vivarium plant sellers as good like medium to large size planted
tropical terrarium plants, because you know, they grow well as epiphytes. They
like humidity, they're evergreen. They maintain their foliage all year, and since
that point there were only a few that were available. There are quite a
few different genera of these cottasiform ant plants, really different looks and shapes and
leaf shapes and everything. Yeah, and some of them are fairly hard to
distinguish, but you will find at least a few varieties in many plant shops
today. They're the Hydna phy Item genus, which is a pretty common one.
I grow that one. Then there's also myrmophy item, so there's a
lot of options that might have narrow leaves, they might have round leaves the
codex maybe like around, like smooth, lumpy kind of shape like the Hydna
phy item. Or it might be more spiny with little aerial roots that jut
out like thorns like I've seen on my myrmophy item. And you just want
to grow them in a really coarse, well draining but moisture retaining mix.
So I actually use basically the same mix that I use for a lot of
my aroids, a lot of my hoyas. It's just chunky with coconut husk
chunks and charcoal and pearlite and pumics, and it allows excellent drainage, but
it also allows them to stay fairly consistently moist for long periods of time before
I need to water them again. And in the summer you keep them pretty
well. They respond well to fertilizer. They always have air moving through the
roots, so you can keep them pretty moist. They will rot if you
keep them too wet, and if there's not enough air flow, like those
two things together become a problem. So if your mixes finer, let them
drive more. If your mixes supercourse, keep them wet, and you can
grow them mounted, but you basically have to water them every day if you're
going to do that. But the really great thing about these is that they
grow into amazing specimens pretty quickly. And I've had the two that I'm growing
now. They live on a west facing window sill that gets really good light,
and I'm actually growing them in that kind of like layered planting technique that
I've discussed and it's on our ticket. Yeah, Like it's a glass vase
that has a hole drilled in the side of it so that there's like the
lecca layer that water flows out of the side hole like where the water reservoir
ends. Then there's a wick to draw the water from that reservoir into the
chunky aeroid mix that it's in. But I f them a few times of
summer and they grow surprisingly fast, Like it might not look like it's growing
super fast, but if you look and compared to older photos, would be
like, dang, that condex is three times bigger than it was when I
planted it two years ago. And they also have cool flowers. They are
not very showy because they show right between like leaf axles along the stem.
But my murmiphy item has true blue flowers, like they are actually pale sky
blue. They're stunning. The Heydna phy item they're just tiny and white.
There's no fragrance unfortunately, like I always expect from Gardinia slash Coffee family plants.
But the cool thing is that they basically self fertilize themselves, so you
often get berries that form on your mature plants. And these berries might be
white, they might be red or yellow, and you could just pluck them
out and then like plant them and you can grow your own new ant plant.
But the reason that I love these so much is because they're very like
kind of tropical foliage appealing they're also bizarre botanical novelty plants that people will just
be intrigued by. They are kind of designed in this like evolutionary sense to
work with certain species of ants that are not native to where we are.
So you're not going to have ants moving in if they're growing in your kitchen,
even if you move them outside for the summer, you're not going to
get ants. I do keep telling Brian like, oh, yeah, I
have an order from Papua New Guinea to get like, you know, a
queen ant from this species that it can live in our kitchen. And he's
like, you're not doing that happened, But it can't happen if you're in
like a greenhouse, because sometimes things come in from where they were grown.
So I have her that as an issue, but as a home person,
don't worry about it. You're not going to get ants in your apartment or
grow room. Yeah. I just think amdpoints are great. There's a lot
of them, you can have a collection of them. They do really well
if you're just faithful with keeping them lightly moist while they're in active growth.
I let them dry a bit over the winter between waterings, and so far
they're not too frustrated. Once they've grown up a bit, they can tolerate
more drought. So if you start to notice the Cotex looking a little bit
shriveled, or if leaves are yellowing and dropping, give it some water.
If it's not growing well, or if the leaves are yellowing and you're watering
it nicely, give it some fertilizer. They're surprisingly easy. I've killed a
bunch of them, but after kind of like doing this like layered planting method
or being more consistent with my water in general, they're surprisingly great. Yeah.
And then Stephen mentioned the Dyscoria and the bigfoot plant earlier, but that's
a huge group that like it's more like the Stefania. But these are plants
that just grow vines out of like this seasonal husk. Some of them become
enormous. Yeah, like barky cottas, they're cool, and like I just
want to kind of throw in, like I have a little bit of a
chip on my shoulder about people calling sweet potatoes yams. But these are two
great families for Cotex plants because you have like the mourning glory family is convava.
Like I said before, that's where we get like sweet potatoes. But
there's also a lot of like quote, mourning glories that do grow from a
very stefania like tuber and they'll grow beautiful vines, a beautiful foliage, beautiful
flowers. They're a little bit harder to find, but you can get them
online. You can get them through specialty places. They're stunning. And we
all know what morning glory flowers. This whole family has those like trumpet shaped
blooms. I think they're fantastic. And then the Yam family. I hope
that I'm saying this right. It's Discoriaca, and they're fairly similar because there
are vines that come out of these plants, and there are just some really
amazing plants in both of these groups. That is where I would put people
towards, Like if you want a seasonal vine that just has like gorgeous foliage
that grows rapidly. Some of these flower some of them have cinnamon scented flowers,
like the Yam family, the morning glory family. Take a look of
their there's so many choices. There's a lot of very similar plants elsewhere that
kind of do the similar thing, but they're very seasonal. So you gave
us kind of some high level places to look. But if you want to
grow these types of plants, catics plants, it does require a little bit
more research, a little bit more understanding of the species. So take this
kind of high level Stefania but better as we'll have all the names in the
show notes. But then take these names and go do your own research,
see which ones you're drawn to, and explore because it really is a wide
and wild world of cotys. And you can really just Google, like if
you're on like I Love etc. And eBay for ordering some of my weird
plants, you can just like search for cotex plants and you can find new
ones that you haven't heard of. There are species geraniums that do this.
There's a fike it, well, there are several fikeus. But like,
there are cotex plants for a lot of different tastes and styles. There are
some that are very tropicals oriented. There are some that are very succulents oriented.
There are some that are like weird, ugly botanical novelty oriented. Like
there's just a ton of choices here. Yeah, I love it, So
go indulge your curiosities. Ask Google, and I can't let you guys go
without getting your updates. Our audience who knows you probably wants to know what's
been going on. I personally know you and know number one that you're you
know, growing into different types of plant parents, exploring new curiosities that you
have. Also, I want to pat you guys on the back for exploring
your plant passion offline privately and letting that like really fuel you and light you
up. So can I have your updates on? You know, last year
we kind of talked about this what we were looking forward to doing in twenty
twenty two. So what are you guys looking forward to in twenty twenty three
in regards to your plant collections. So for me, I am dusting off.
I had an old online presence called Weird House Plants. It was an
Instagram and YouTube thing. It's a different style than what we were doing at
Plant Daddy. It's a lot more sort of just talking about care and showing
them something that I think is strange and you know, it probably isn't at
this point right, or maybe it never was right right, But like ones
that I think are cool and special. At home, I'm focusing more on
my little cacti and succulents and kind of my stuff like on a table,
like Pokemon size collectible, you know, odd things like that. Yeah,
excited about that, And if I can share it here My next little moonshot
thing that I'm doing with a friend. We're writing a Christmas movie. Okay?
Is that so field? Right? So I have a friend who's a
screenwriter and we wrote this thing kind of for fun, and his manager was
like, oh my gosh, no, this is actually like what people sort
of want right now. So all of my December and this is being recorded
in December. We're a meeting a few times a week trying to do this
first draft of this movie. And we're both like, what are we doing?
This is such a kind of funny, weird genre. I'm watching tons
of Christmas movies and it's just like a fun Lindsay Lohan movie. Of course
I loved it so many people. Yeah, I love this genre, And
for me, I'm kind of like, sometimes they're good, sometimes they're funny,
right, but they're definitely comforting. Also, Will Ferrell's Knew Christmas movie
that came out on Apple spirited incredible, incredible. Can I sing the holiday
music on your movie? Yes, I'm going to say yes, Okay,
I don't. I don't know how it works yet, but yeah, put
me if you I'll do it for free. Put me in coach, yes,
if you need if you need it, in you know, any sort
of pitch packaging. I'm happy to provide vocals for you. Holiday music is
my favorite to sing. Yeah, wow, okay, perfect, Yeah,
I love it. Oh my god, that makes me so excited. You
didn't. I didn't know that offline. That makes me. You are,
like I say, Stephen, you are an onion, my friend, you
are just the juiciest onion. Okay, what about you, Matthew? Well,
I have since we started our hiatus, I dove into home renovations and
landscaping. Like I replaced a bunch of light fixtures. I like redid the
whole entryway to our house with like stripping and refinishing the front door and making
my own like bespoke address plaque and repainting railings. And I've you know,
like we've lived in this house for over two years now, we've owned it
for one of those years. I knew what I wanted to do in the
garden was planning out in my head all of the little details for more than
a year before I even started doing anything. So as soon as Stephen and
I were like wrapped up with Season three, I was out in the yard
digging up everything. There was nothing that I could salvage, so I started
by just removing every single awful dead shrub and diseased thing from the yard.
Then we had our brickwork restored because it's a nineteen twenty nine craftsman tutor and
I now know a lot about masonry and like vintage homes, and I'm researching
like how to restore like, you know, a previously remodeled nineteen twenty nine
tutor style craftsmen. So I'm like, you know, downloading twenties catalogs of
tiles. Yeah, but you know your knowledge of stone, like that the
die tribe you went off on about stone the other day when we were talking,
I was like, damn, this guy does research, whether it's plants
or what like. You are passionate about learning on another level. I just
have this this vision in my head. And in our neighborhood there's a lot
of people who do kind of like raised garden bed rockeries, but they're all
using basalt, which is a common rock around here. For landscaping, but
I wanted something a little different because I'm just that kind of person. So
I went with like North Cascade granite because like, I love the idea that
it's kind of local, and I hike in the North Cascades. And then
I used flagstone. I laid a big patio in the center of the lawn.
I did rockeries for raised plants. My vision is that it's all seasons
appeal, that there's something blooming every day of the year. Every flower that
was like specifically selected for the flowers, they're all either white or black.
And I know that I have to kind of like be a little bit flexible
in what I mean by black. But I've gotten really close with some of
these things, and everything is fragrant, and I've researched like sage brush,
So I have like tons of different kinds of art of Nisia, and I
have like all these mini collections, like here are all of the daphnees,
here are all the cycloman here's all the Yukahs. So what I'm hearing garden
party when Maria visits Seattle. Oh yeah, and hell yeah, I've even
made my own fire pit. Yeah, like the fire pit it is a
smokeless design. I learned how to do concrete, I learned how to make
forms. I got a special concrete that's used for like crematoriums and pizza ovens.
So anyway, that's that's been my whole life. And now that we
finally started getting like cool, wet winter weather in Seattle and we've actually had
some snow, like my outdoor plans, they're accomplished, they're done. I
get to dive back into the spring after things have woken up a bit.
Oh, You're gonna have so much fun. I have to admit it's been
really nice, like doing things privately for myself creatively that I haven't turned into
content. It has been like this is just something that I'm doing for myself,
and I am just so invested and I'm so passionate about it. It's
like really reawakened some of my original plant love. And it's been so nostalgic
as I'm picking some of these plants to remind me of my grandmother or travels
that I've been on. I just feel so like activated and like fresh now
because I've been looking forward to this project and I just love making my house
a home. So that's just all my energy is going there these days.
That's beautiful. You can see it in the way that you talk about it,
like you just lit up like a grow light, like a full spectrum
grow light talking about it. And I think that's really important. And I
think that's also a huge message for the listeners as we all have our little
plants to grams and we all have you know, me personally too, just
like sharing so much. But it's really beautiful to just like cultivate some passion
on the side that's private and sacred almost in that way. So it's you
are inspiring me to kind of refresh that within myself too. I just love
you guys so much. This was so fun. Thank you. Oh it's
always a blast to join you super fun. Yes, until next time we
have our standing January weary date, if not earlier. Perfect. I love
it, Love you guys. Thanks than by all right, special thanks to
Stephen and Matthew. I certainly hope that we might see more of them in
the coming months. They're just the greatest and I'm so thankful for their friendship.
You know, the podcasting space has gotten much larger since I've joined,
and I've just I love their podcast, and I love these boys. They're
so nice. I really hope to go to Seattle and visit them one day.
I seriously need to see all of the amazing work that Matthew's done in
his outdoor garden. Pictures aren't enough and also special thanks to our sponsors.
We have a bunch of news sponsors this year in order to help support the
show and help me create weekly episodes instead of bi weekly episodes. Our sponsors
are handpicked by me. I approach a lot of them because they make products
that I like and want and want our community to have. We have such
an amazing group of companies supporting the show, and I can't speak highly enough,
especially of the four sponsors in this episode, wind River Chimes the most
Magical Chimes, the Barraby Waited Blanket, Territorial Seed Company, Oh my god,
I love all their seeds, and obviously a spam organic my rider dies.
So thanks again for them supporting and let me know if you try a
cotics plant after this episode. I'm excited, like I said, for my
Stefania erecta to wake back up. I mean, we're deep in in the
winter, so it's going to be a while, but I'm excited for it
to awaken and try again and maybe trellius it and also explore some of the
other varieties that they talked about, because they really opened my eyes to so
many plants that I hadn't really thought about using as houseplants. So with that,
my plant friends, it's been a joy put this episode together for you,
and until next time, keep blooming and keep growing Joy. Plant friend,
thank you so much for tuning in today. If you like what you
heard, make sure that you're subscribed to the show so you don't miss an
episode. We have incredible whole episodes lined up in twenty twenty three, and
I don't want you to miss one topic. And while you're subscribing, would
you mind clicking over to the review section and leaving us a review. Reviews
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If you're looking for more opportunities to grow as a plant parent with Growing
Joy content, we've got a ton of free options for you. First,
there's the Plant Parent Personality Test. It's so fun it takes literally three minutes
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alley, tailored just for you inspired by your results. The link is in
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you take the test. If you're looking to up level your plant parent game,
check out my website. We've got a bunch of free guides that you
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