I'm a houseplant aficionado, for the most part. I have many houseplants, and I'm always welcoming new green buddies into my home. My friend knows this and gave me this little guy, but I don't know what he is, and worry I'm not caring for him properly!
The plant is very young. It has slightly waxy (but not stiff), slightly glossy, and just barely serrated leaves (see close-up in pictures), so slight you almost can't see it. At first, I thought it was a baby ficus, but the serrations and the more elongated, less round shape of the leaf lead me to believe otherwise. It looks like it might be some sort of very young citrus tree, like a lemon, but the growth habit looks to be more shrublike, less treelike.
Any guesses? All I know is it is a "houseplant", meaning it will have to live indoors here in zone 5, except in the summer if I put it out to catch some extra rays (if they like that, which I don't even know yet!).
Thank you!
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It could be a schefflera. It is easy to care for. Water it weekly and expose it to light.
Hi Judy,
I'm pretty certain it's not a schefflera, or at least not the traditional "dwarf umbrella tree" variety, as I've got two of them (one propagated from a cutting of the first) and they tend to drink less and grow faster, at least in my house. I've had to prune my big guy back about 2 feet annually the past 3 years. He keeps scraping the ceiling by the end of every summer and puts out new growth constantly, year round, with no fertilizer and water maybe every 2 weeks?
It is very pretty, but I am drawing a total blank. I even did a reverse image search on the leaf. It has a tropical vibe to it or something in the rubber tree family, but its name is elusive to me today. Tomorrow it may pop right into my brain (in which case I will post back as things often come to me at 4:00 am and with the interest I can post and not bother anyone).
You may want to try your local home extension office and see what they say. Here is a finder, just put in your zip:
pickyourown.org/
Ours is quite helpful!!
Post back what you learn.
Hello, Pghgirl40,
I have looked up my extension office and may have to take a trip out if I get the time. This will probably be a while, but I'll continue my search!
I, too, did a reverse image search on the leaf, and the closest I came was indeed a coffee or lemon/citrus of some sort, like Catherine said. Though if it is, she is probably also right in saying that it is a pseudo-shrub created by tossing a handful of seeds in soil and repotting the resulting clump of stems.
Hi ! I think if it was a citrus, it is old enough for its feet to have already turned to wood and a brown colour. Regardless of the type of plant, it looks like a "fake" bush. Like when you put a lot of citrus seeds in a pot, you get a kind of shrub because of all the seeds that have germinated together but in the wild, a citrus tree is born from a single seed and develops a single trunk. Stores also sell "fake" coffee bushes born from many seeds. If the plant is very young, the leaves may not have their actual shape yet, as an older coffee tree would have wavy leaves, but when it is very young, the leaves are not yet. The bushes rarely start with a lot of shoots coming out of the ground.
Hi Catherine,
I am inclined to agree with you on the "fake" bush hypothesis, and the stems themselves do have a gray-brown woody texture to them already. Because of this, I'm afraid that they may be growing so close together that as this guy matures, I might have to pluck or split as needed. I hope I don't hurt him.
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