Episode 185: the silver dollar vine, Xerosicyos danguyi

The silver dollar vine (Xerosicyos danguyi) growing in the glasshouse at the New York Botanical Gardens. Photograph: Ryan Somma on Flickr.

Transcript

Episode 185

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Jane: If you want to hone some new skills this Spring, check out Learning With Experts, the global classroom community that brings people together to learn from the best in the business. Their range of courses covers everything from food and drink to photography and gardening, so why not become an accredited garden designer and learn with world-renowned experts including influential Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf and multi-award-winning British designer Tom Stuart-Smith, or take a course on herb gardening, natural beekeeping or growing veg? You can start whenever it suits and you get to meet other gardening enthusiasts in the sociable online classroom. Visit learningwithexperts.com/ontheledge now for 10% off your first course. That's learningwithexperts.com/ontheledge. Learning With Experts; online learning that's guaranteed to lift the spirits!

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Jane: Hello and welcome to On The Ledge and this week it's all about the money, money, money. No, I'm not going to be telling you why you shouldn't be spending huge amounts on Aroids this week, but rather we're talking about a plant known as the Silver Dollar Vine. If you prefer the scientific name Xerosicyos danguyi - put that in your pipe and smoke it! No actually don't smoke it, that's a really bad idea! Also in this episode, I'll be answering a listener question about making a Philodendronfuller and we'll be hearing from listener Greg.

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Jane: Thank you to everyone who filled out my survey and congratulations to Craig from Scotland who was the winner of that £25 spreadshirt voucher and I'm delighted to say that he treated himself to a lovely On The Ledge T-shirt, so well done Craig! My assistant, Kelly, has been compiling the results and I will be using that to help me determine future episodes of the show, so, again, thanks to all of you who took the time to fill that survey out.

A reminder that I'm going to be live in Market Harborough in Leicestershire in the UK on Monday 31st May 2021, for the Leaf Houseplant Festival. I'm doing a houseplant clinic between 3 & 4pm and you can get your tickets now using the code Jane21 for 20% discount. Al the details are in the show notes, so please go and check it out and you can take a look at the other talks, masterclasses and workshops taking place at this lovely two-day event. If you can't be there, don't worry, because a recording of the houseplant clinic will be going up on this here podcast not too long after.

Thank you to GabFab and RinseRepeat for your five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. Leaving a review for the show is a great way to show your support and thank you, also, to those who became Patreon subscribers this week. That's Lucy who became a Crazy Plant Person, Heidi who became a SuperFan and Ange and Carrie who both became Ledge-ends. Check the show notes for details of how to become a Patreon and if you commit to the Ledge-end or SuperFan level then you get extras like ad-free versions of the show and two extra episodes a month in the form of my Extra Leaf episodes.

I've had a great week working on Legends of the Leaf, my houseplant book that's in production at the moment. This book is going to tell the story of 25 iconic houseplants and also dig into the secrets of making them thrive in your home. You can pre-order a copy via the link on my website and there are loads of lovely things you can get, from prints from the book, to a copy of the cover art.

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Jane: I do like to mix it up on On The Ledge, so this week's show is really devoted to a little delve into one particular plant species, the Silver Dollar Vine, Xerosicyos danguyi. It's a Madagascar native that I picked up a couple of years ago now, at the Cactus World Live event, and I've rather fallen in love with this succulent vine. So I hope you'll indulge me chatting to you about this plant for a few minutes in this episode but, you know what, it would be so much better if I had my plant in front of me while I'm talking so, hang on a minute, I'm just going to pop into the house and get my Silver Dollar Vine! Be right back. Just talk amongst yourselves!

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Jane: Did you miss me? I'm back. I've got my Xerosicyos here and what can I tell you about this plant? There are a lot of plants that reference money, aren't there? From plants that have coin-shaped leaves, like Pilea peperomioides, to plants that are supposed to bring you good luck in some way, like Pachira aquatica and also the Jade Tree, Crassula ovata, but this plant is definitely in the camp of being named after the shape of its leaves because they really do look quite like coins. The mature leaves are really quite thick and chunky. I would say they're a good almost half-a-centimetre in depth and they are quite round. The young growth starts off quite tender and a lot less chunky and then, as the leaf matures, it becomes very, very sturdy and solid. This is a vining plant, it's often described as a Liana because, in its native Madagascar, it grows in semi-arid bushland type territory, where there's plenty of other trees and shrubs around and it likes to clamber around through those trees and shrubs.

It has a good little trick for clambering around; it has tendrils. When you look at these tendrils, it might remind you of a cucumber plant, or a melon plant, and that's because, actually, Xerosicyos is part of the Cucurbitaceae family, the Cucurbitfamily, which includes things like melons, gourds and cucumbers. So these tendrils that are produced by the young growth latch on to anything it can find and allow it to climb. My plant is still quite young, this was probably a cutting taken about two years ago and I've got about 30 centimetres of growth. I haven't propagated this plant yet but I probably will at some point and we'll come on to propagation in a bit.

The genus name? Xerosicyos, that comes from two Greek words Xeros meaning dry and Sicyos meaning cucumber, so there we go, there's the cucumber reference. There are a total of six species in this genus, so it's not a huge genus, and they're all found on Madagascar, which is off the coast of Africa. The two best known of the other species are Xerosicyos perrieri and Xerosicyos** pubescens and the latter is particularly well known amongst succulent collectors because it's a Caudiciform, in fact all three of these species are classed as called Caudiciform but it's Pubescens that has this huge Caudex as it grows older. What's a Caudex? Well, Caudex just means stem but it's also taken on the meaning of a swollen basal stem, a big, fat, potato-looking thing which sits on the surface of the soil and acts as a great reservoir for water and nutrients for these plants. I suspect the reason why Xerosicyos danguyi doesn't have the Caudex, is that it can store so much water in these leaves, these coin-shaped leaves, whereas Pubescens and Perrieri don't seem to have the same kind of succulence to their leaves and, in fact, they are deciduous, so they lose their leaves for part of the year, whereas Danguyi keeps its leaves all year round.

Danguyi is from the south and south-west of Madagascar, around the city of Toliara, and this is a place where temperatures never really get below about 15C, that's about 58/59F, and for most of the year, the temperature is around the mid to high 20C, mid-70F or so. Unfortunately, all of the Xerosicyos species are, to some extent, under threat. I think Perrieri is particularly under threat because of that Caudex, it makes it a very appealing thing for collectors to take from the wild and sell. So the first thing I'd say, if you want to acquire one of the specimens of this genus, is please, please, please make sure that you're getting it from somebody who has not wild-collected your plant. Certainly with D**anguyi it's pretty easy to propagate, so there should be plenty of opportunity to get hold of plants that have been cultivated in captivity, as it were.

We've talked so often in the show about plant poaching and the wonderful plants of Madagascar are under a lot of threat from deforestation and removal of plant habitats, as well as plant collectors, so we really need to be conserving the very precious flora of Madagascar. If you're interested in exploring this further, there's a great Twitter account which is @TeamKMCC, which is the Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre, which is working to stop biodiversity loss in Madagascar.

The flowers of Xerosicyos danguyi are really not that exciting, but there is something interesting to say about them and that is that this is a dioecious species. What does that mean? Well, it means that plants are either male or female, in other words they produce a male flower, or they produce a female flower. They don't produce both, as opposed to a monoecious plant which has both the male and female flowers. Or, in some cases, monoecious plants have so-called Perfect Flowers, which contain both the male and the female sex organs. So, to give you another houseplant example, Begonias, they're monoecious and they've got male and female flowers that are separate but they're on the same plant, which, if you have ever examined your Begonia closely, you'll notice. Other dioecious plants? Well, there's the Camadorius in the Palm family and also Euphorbia obesa, or Turkish Temple, or the Tartan Golf Ball, whichever of its common names you want to use, that's also a dioecious plant. So you get male and female specimens. I'll put a link in the show notes that explains a bit more detail about this subject.

The flowers in themselves are not that dramatic. They are a sort of yellowy green colour, quite small and come in clusters, not actually dissimilar to Hoya flowers, although a lot less dramatic. I've put a picture of what I think are the male flowers on my show notes and I've linked to some female flowers in those notes as well, so you can have a look and compare and contrast. So, if you did want to produce seed, you'd need to make sure that you had a male and a female plant and I'm not sure whether, when you're buying one, you'll be able to establish this. Possibly, if you have a very knowledgeable grower, but you may just have to take pot luck. That said, growing this plant from seed is probably not that wise an idea because it is so easy to propagate and, indeed, let's get on to that now.

My plant, I'm just looking at it now, and I was wondering about whether I would propagate, but I've read a bit more about propagating this plant and the advice seems to be that propagation happens much more readily from maturer stems. So, at the minute, I'm thinking that I'm not going to cut it back because it is really still quite small at the moment, but if I was going to cut, I would need to be taking whole sections of stem because, unlike various other succulent species, this does not propagate from a single leaf. So, in a way, it is a bit like Hoya kerrii, you see those lovely heart-shaped leaves in an individual pot, but it may grow roots, but it will just never continue to grow into anything beyond the leaf, assuming there's no stem attached. So you need a section of stem.

I've linked in the show notes to a couple of videos showing the propagation of Xerosicyos danguyi - there's different methods that people use. There's a brilliant video by a wonderful woman who has an account called Maria's Plants - do go and look at that, she's so much fun! - and she shows propagating by cutting up a vine and just taking one section of stem with one or two nodes and one leaf attached. The other video that I link to shows four leaf cuttings. I don't think it really matters which you want to go for. If you're going for bulk production, then the one leaf option is probably the way to go, but if you're not looking to produce that many plants it may be safer to go for a four leaf cutting and make it that bit bigger with more nodes on it. With all succulent cuttings, it's really important that you allow the cut end to callous over for a day or two, in the fresh air, before you actually pot your cutting up into some gritty compost.

In terms of your substrate, this plant is growing in pure pumice because this is what it came in and I haven't repotted it yet and I'm just wondering, lifting it out of its pot and throwing throwing pumice around my desk, whether I should have a go re-potting it? I suspect it's probably fine in here because it's got no sign of roots coming out the bottom and I'm not sure I wanted to disturb it at the moment, but when I repot, I probably will put it into a mix that is not pure pumice because most of my houseplants and, indeed, my succulents, are in a soil mix rather than this kind of mix and it just makes care easier across the board if you can apply the same levels of fertiliser. Because pumice is nutrient-free you do have to use more fertiliser when you're using that particular type of substrate. Yes, I think this is doing okay at the minute.

This plant is one that will grow vigorously during the rainy season in its home nation of Madagascar and so Spring and early Summer is when it's really putting growth on, where I am here in the UK, and at the minute it is doing really nicely. I'm just going to get my little magnifying glass out here because I'm not sure if I've got flowers coming or if I've got more leaves. Hang on. As always, sorry about my squeaky chair, I have a magnifying glass in my drawer and I'm just going to take a look and see if I can see what this tiny nub is going to turn into. You know what, I think that tiny nub is going to be a flower bud but I'll keep you posted. I can't quite see, it's so tiny that it's hard to see, but I think that's going to be a flower bud, which is exciting! Yes, this plant will grow quite a lot during that growth season and then it will have a nice rest over the winter and that's when you want to keep it a little bit cooler and keep that potting mix really quite dry.

This is, as I say, known as a Caudiciform plant, so it must have some kind of stem, I'm just going to dig around in the perlite and see if I can see anything in the way of a swelling. Let's have a look, I'm digging. I've dug down about an inch now and I can see that the stem is somewhat swollen, obviously this is quite a young cutting so it hasn't had much time to develop, but that will help the plant to keep moist in times when there's not much water available. As I say, those leaves are really the key because they are so firm and solid, once they have reached maturity, that you can imagine there's an awful lot of water stored in those too.

So I'm hoping this will flower for me this Spring now. I don't know quite what I'm going to do in terms of supporting, or otherwise, this plant. I have seen it growing in various ways. I'll put a picture in the show notes of a wonderful garden in California where this is grown in a xeriscaping outdoor scheme. Obviously, with their very mild winters, it would be possible to grow this outside and there's a beautiful xeriscaping bed which you can see and this plant features there and is just scrambling around among other cacti and succulents. I think I could put something in there to support it but, at the minute, I'm allowing it to dangle and I suspect what it will want to do with those tendrils at some point is grab on to something. I find this with my Hoyas that they grow better when they're actually given something to grab, so I will be providing some support for this plant once it gets a little bit longer. If you just want to let it go crazy then you can but it's always going to be seeking out support is what I'm trying to say.

So we've talked a little bit about propagation, we've talked about the flowers, what else to say? Feeding-wise, we've already said about feeding, this is a plant that is used to living in places where the soil is not going to be nutrient-rich, so you don't need to be lobbing on the houseplant feed all the time. Yes, a good weekly feed when the plant's in active growth, but weak, weak diluted is what I'd recommend but, as I've already said, be aware of what substrate you're using and whether it already contains nutrients. So if you're potting into some kind of soil-based mix, or compost-based mix, then there will be nutrients in that stuff already, so give the plant a chance to use up those nutrients before you start feeding.

So that's Xerosicyos danguyi and I'm glad that I'm able to bring you some information about this plant. I'm just going to drop in here, if you're in the mood for trailing succulents - and who isn't!? - two other trailing succulents that I rather like; the Rat Tail Cactus, Aporocactus flagelliformis, I recently got hold of one of these, it was a sort of a rescue mission where somebody had contacted the British Cactus and Succulent Society asking for somebody to take some plants and one of the plants I ended up with was this plant, the Rat Tail Cactus, which I have not had since I was a child. As the name suggests it's got these rat tail-like trailing stems and mine hasn't flowered yet because it's still recovering but I have had some of the rat's tails fall off, so I am rooting those to make some new plants. It does have these lovely flowers in spring and summer and they're usually a kind of reddish colour and beautiful, like most cactus flowers, and it's from a different continent than the Xerosicyos. This one's from central America, parts of Mexico and, like the Rhipsalis and the Lepismium, this one is usually to be found growing in trees or sometimes in rocks, which gives you a clue about its potting needs.

Final one, Othonna capensis, commonly known as Ruby Necklace and think String of Pearls but you've got these sort of bean shaped leaves on a bright purple stem and this one comes from the eastern cape of South Africa, like so many succulents do. I have a feeling that the genus on this one's recently changed to Crassothonna, which is a bit of a strange one, but mostly you'll still see it sold as an Othonna capensis. It's a member of the Asteraceae and if you look at the flowers, you probably will realise that because they're little yellow daisies. I think this one's a little bit easier, possibly, than Curio rowleyanus, String of Pearls. Maybe you'd disagree, but you do just have to do the usual succulent things of making sure that substrate is really nice and free-draining and making sure that the plant gets a cool, dry rest period and during the growing season you can really ramp up the watering. If you put it in full sun, particularly outside, it will go really, really bright red but, obviously, if it's in a more shady spot, then it will stay much greener. So hurrah for the trailing succulents! Those are three of my favourites and three you might not have tried.

Now it's time for Meet the Listener and this week's listener is Greg, who you might know from the Facebook group Houseplant Fans of On The Ledge, where he's a regular poster. Let's hear from him now.

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Greg: My name is Greg, I live in coastal southern California in an apartment with my boyfriend, our pets and my plants. I have an extensive collection of houseplants, an extensive collection of potted outdoor plants on our balcony and I also maintain the plant installation that I helped to design and install at the local public aquarium, so when I can't get my plant fix at home, I go to the aquarium and get my plant fix over there too.

Jane: Question one. You've been selected to travel to Mars as part of the first human colony on the Red Planet. There's only room for one houseplant from your collection on board. Which plant do you choose?

Greg: If I were to go to Mars and live there, I would bring a Golden Pothos. Golden Pothos does not necessarily sound like the most interesting choice at first, but if you're going to Mars, you're probably not going to be able to get another plant shipped to you if the one you bring dies, so I would really want to bring something that I was confident would not die on me. If you think about Golden Pothos, you can easily divide it up into multiple plants, it takes a lot of different conditions in terms of light and water, it doesn't really mind not getting much nutrients, so it seems like a really good choice in that regard. Then, in terms of it being kind of boring, it might be boring here on earth, but once you're on Mars, it's a plant from another planet and I'd say that's pretty exotic!

Jane: Question two. What is your favourite episode of On The Ledge?

Greg: My favourite episode is episode 164 because the guest, I think his name was Travis, talked to Jane about how Jane wanted to be more expressive with her clothing choices, when she was a kid, and Jane expressed regret that she hadn't been more putting herself out there as a kid and then Travis said: "What if you start doing that now?" and that inspired me to start dyeing my hair. When I was a teenager, I always wanted to do it and then into my 20s, I always wanted to do it but I was afraid to for some reason. So even though it might seem like a pretty insignificant action, the fact that I was overcoming this fear of how people would view me for expressing myself made it pretty significant. I dyed it purple and currently it's black on top, blonde on the sides and on the back.

Jane: Question three. Which Latin name do you say to impress people?

Greg: The Latin name that I use to impress people, I don't have one, but there is a Latin name that I would be impressed by if someone else can say it. It's the name of an orchid endemic to Madagascar that is critically endangered. It is critically endangered because the pollinator for the orchid has gone extinct, it's called Angraecum longicalcar. I'm probably saying that wrong but the species is longicalcar**,** I think, so if you can say that, I'm impressed by you!

Jane: Question four. Crassulacean acid metabolism, or guttation?

Greg: I'm the sort of person who will go to a bookstore and buy a book because I'm excited about the prospect of learning something and then I never read the book and I have a bunch of books I've never read! Similarly, I am not familiar with CAM. I am familiar with guttation. So I'd have to say CAM because, like all of the unread books I own, the CAM photosynthesis Wikipedia page is an unread Wikipedia page that I'm excited about some day reading. So I'll tell you what, if you feature me in the podcast, I'll read that whole Wikipedia article, top to bottom!

Jane: Question five. Would you rather spend £200 on a variegated Monstera, or £200 on 20 interesting cacti?

Greg: I would go with the £200 Monstera. I have quite a large collection of cacti and succulents. To pick one genus off the top of my head, of many genera in my collection, Dudleya. So I have Dudleya gatesii, Dudleya [s.l insolaris 26.54], Dudleya pachyphytum, Dudleya farinosa, Dudleya brittonii, Dudleya** attenuata, Dudleya cymosa Figueroa Mountain. I have quite a few! I don't have an established variegated Monstera, so it would be cooler for that reason and then, as you might be able to guess, with so many cacti and succulents, I don't have that much space for 20 more!

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Jane: Thank you, Greg, and now it's time for Question of the Week which comes from Claire, who sent me a picture of a Philodendron Brasil doing its thing, standing on the table with two Macbooks and a glass with a lemon in it. I don't know why I love those household details, but they always make me smile! So what about your Philodendron Brasil is concerning you, Claire?

Claire says: "This is the only trailing plant I have and I'm not sure I'm getting the best from it. How can I make it fill out more? It gets really long and I give it yearly haircuts but it hasn't really expanded. I lost a trail during winter as it was weak at the roots, should I nip off the bottom and try more propagating? Typically I criss-cross the plant to give it a comb-over to make it look fuller and put less pressure on the weak roots where they meet the soil, as that felt intuitive. Any help to make this plant thrive would be wonderful."

Okay, so it looks like this Philodendron Brasil is very healthy, there's nothing wrong with this plant in terms of the leaves all look good and healthy. Like most Philodendron Brasils, the variegation is very variable on this plant. People often panic because they get one leaf that's all lime green rather than the standard pattern of dark green with a kind of lime green streak running down the middle of that heart-shaped leaf, but you get all kinds of variants, which is why I'm very doubtful about these very, very expensive, "Oh, it's Brasil but it's got this cream splash!" or whatever it's supposed to be. This whole species is extremely variable. Think about human beings. We're all in the same species but we all look really different and Philodendron hederaceum is a bit like that - that's the species name of the Philodendron Brasil. So that's not to worry about but I see what you mean, Claire, because you've only got, I think, two stems going into the soil, how do you make this plant bushier? I like the idea of crossing over the stems to make the plant support itself.

I had this problem with my Philodendron Brasil and I'll tell you what solved it for me and that was growing it up a support. Lots of these plants will do okay trailing but I find that they tend to just grow better when they have got more support. So I put mine on a short cone-shaped support, which I've linked to in the show notes before, but I'll try to dig out and find a link for. It's basically made of plastic-covered wire and it's a bit like an obelisk but it's open at the top, so it's a set of circles joined by vertical wires. The beauty of that is it means you can tie it in and, as the plant grows, you can tie it in again, and it just means that there's not so much strain on those stems as the plant grows longer. Looking at the pot, Claire, it looks like quite a big pot for the number of stems you have. When you re-potted, I don't know whether there was a full root ball there, that's pretty much taking up the whole pot, or whether the roots made up a very small minority of the volume of that pot, but that's something to think about. If you've got roots in a pot where there's a lot of soil and not much root a) they're much more likely to be under pressure and falling out and b) you get this rootless soil which, when watered, gets very clumpy and wet and doesn't really drain very well, so it may be that you need to downsize that pot a little. I would also possibly recommend some kind of trellis or support.

If you don't want to do that, I think the main thing you can do is just take loads of cuttings. You've got some really long growth there, at the end. You could definitely take five, six, seven, eight cuttings, each with one node, propagate those and then I would just add them into the top of the pot, this is what I've done with mine and it's worked a treat. So, propagating those, just make sure you snip off just above a node and then trim to just below a node, remembering that a node is just the point where the leaf stalk, the petiole, joins the stem, so it's a little bumpy bit on the stem. So, cut just above a node and then trim that cutting to just below a node because that's where the roots will be produced from. Trim down the leaves, so you're left with one or two leaves and I would usually stick Philodendron Brasil in water to propagate and it shouldn't take too long to produce roots.

Once you've got a decent root system, you could just make some space in the top of the pot and chuck it in there, that's what I did, it sounds kind of brutal, but it did work! If you don't want to do that, you could just wait until that plant needs repotting and then amalgamate the cuttings in with the original root ball at that point but I think you could make loads of cuttings and you could definitely fill up that pot, Claire. You may end up with a smaller plant temporarily but, ultimately, that will help to bush it out. It will also help to bush it out because you're doing what's called removing apical dominance. In other words, once that stem is cut it will encourage the plant to push out more side shoots and hopefully grow longer and this is a plant that does want to do that because you'll notice some little nubs on the stem and that is the start of roots which will form either to help the plant cling onto something or indeed to make a new cutting if you cut it off.

So that's my suggestions for you, Claire. I think your plant will be fine. It's a really lovely plant, this, and super tough. Mine's suffering from some aphids at the minute but, aside from that, I just find this a really easy plant and I'm not a great Aroidgrower, but this is one that I find super easy, so I think you will be okay. It's always worth taking some extra cuttings of any plant that you love because you just never know what's going to happen to the main plant and that way you've got something to give away to friends or, indeed, to just make this plant look fuller.

That's Question of the Week done and if you've got a question for me drop me a line to ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com and I will endeavour to provide you with an answer. I can't provide a reply for everybody because I just get so many messages these days, but I do try to answer as many as I possibly can, so do also consider joining the Facebook group Houseplant Fans of On The Ledge, where there are loads of knowledgeable listeners who will be able to help you.

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Jane: That is all for this week's show! I will be back next Friday, 28th May 2021. There won't be a show on 4th June because I'm taking a short break, but I'll be back on 11th June and, before I go, I've got a message for you from your houseplants: they'd like to say thanks for everything you do! Bye!

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Jane: The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll by The Joy Drops, The Road We Used To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and the tracks Chiefs and Endeavour both by Jahzzar. The ad music was Dill Pickles by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra. All tracks are licenced under Creative Commons, visit janeperrone.com for details.

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In this episode I take a look at the silver dollar vine, Xerosicyos danguyi, an intriguing trailing succulent that is a member of the cucurbit family. Plus I answer a question about making a Philodendron fuller, and we hear from listener Greg.

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My specimen of the silver dollar vine. Photograph: Jane Perrone.

Check out the notes below as you listen…

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The flowers of the silver dollar vine. Photograph: 阿橋 HQ on Flickr.

• The genus name Xerosicyos comes from two Greek words: ‘xeros’ which means dry and ‘sicyos’  meaning cucumber: that’s because this genus is a member of the cucurbit family (Cucurbitaceae) and is therefore related to cucumbers, gourds and melons.

• Xerosicyos danguyi is classed as a liana as, given the opportunity, it will scramble among trees. Its stems produce tendrils (that look much like the tendrils on a cucumber plant) to help it anchor onto its hosts.

• There are six accepted species in the Xerosicyos genus, all endemic to Madagascar, of which X. danguyi is one: and the only species that is evergreen. X. perrieri has thinner, more ovate leaves, while X. pubescens grows from a large caudex or swollen basal stem (see below for an image of this).

• If you are interested in the plants of Madagascar, follow @TeamKMCC on Twitter, which is the Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre, working to stop biodiversity loss there.

• This is a dioecious species, meaning plants produce either male or female flowers ,but not both. In order to get viable seed you’d need a male and a female plant, which you could then cross-pollinate. There’s some information and pictures of the female flowers here. The picture below shows the male flowers (I think!).

• This plant loves lots of heat, so will need to be grown in a sunny windowsill: if you are lucky enough to live in a climate like that of California, you could incorporate it into a xeriscaped bed, as per the picture below.

• I haven’t propagated my plant yet as it’s too young, but I’ve read that it’s preferable to use a stem that’s mature, and has firmed up to be fairly woody, as this ensures success. Unlike many other succulent species, it will not successfully root from an individual lea: like Hoya kerrii, it may produce roots, but unless there is a piece of stem attached, it will not put on new growth.

• Here’s a useful video on propagating the silver dollar vine, showing cuttings with four leaves. I also love this video from the fabulous Maria’s Plants on the same subject, which shows a slightly different technique taking short sections of stem with one leaf. Whichever approach you take, remember to leave the cuttings to callus over at the cut point for a day or two, and make sure you know which end of the cutting is the base and which is the top.

• Two other underrated trailing succulents I love are Aporocactus flagelliformis the rat’s tail cactus and Crassothonna capensis (often still known by old name Othonna capensis), commonly known as ruby necklace or string of pickles.

Xerosicyos pubescens growing in habitat in Madagascar. This caudiciform is under particular threat from plant poachers. Photograph: voyage-madagascar.org on Flickr.

If you live in California or the Mediterranean, you may be able to grow the silver dollar vine outside, like this garden in Mission Hills, California, where it is displayed with flowering Euphorbia milii and other cacti and succulents. Photograph: Cultivar413 on Flickr.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Clare wanted help with her somewhat straggly Philodendron hederaceum ‘Brasil’. I suggest propagating some of the stems by rooting in water and planting them back in the top of the pot to help it look fuller. I also find that ‘Brasil’ tends to grow better when it has something to cling onto - whether that’s an obelisk, some trellis or a cane.

Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue!

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HOW TO SUPPORT ON THE LEDGE

Contributions from On The Ledge listeners help to pay for all the things that have made the show possible over the last few years: equipment, travel expenses, editing, admin support and transcription.

Want to make a one-off donation? You can do that through my ko-fi.com page, or via Paypal.

Want to make a regular donation? Join the On The Ledge community on Patreon! Whether you can only spare a dollar or a pound, or want to make a bigger commitment, there’s something for you: see all the tiers and sign up for Patreon here.

• The Crazy Plant Person tier just gives you a warm fuzzy feeling of supporting the show you love.

• The Ledge End tier gives you access to two extra episodes a month, known as An Extra Leaf, as well as ad-free versions of the main podcast on weeks where there’s a paid advertising spot, and access to occasional patron-only Zoom sessions.

• My Superfan tier earns you a personal greeting from me in the mail including a limited edition postcard, as well as ad-free episodes.

If you like the idea of supporting On The Ledge on a regular basis but don't know what Patreon's all about, check out the FAQ here: if you still have questions, leave a comment or email me - ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. If you're already supporting others via Patreon, just click here to set up your rewards!

If you prefer to support the show in other ways, please do go and rate and review On The Ledge on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen. It's lovely to read your kind comments, and it really helps new listeners to find the show. You can also tweet or post about the show on social media - use #OnTheLedgePodcast so I’ll pick up on it!

CREDITS

This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops,  The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku, Endeavour by Jahzzar and Chiefs by Jahzzar. The ad music was Dill Pickles by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra. All tracks licensed under Creative Commons.