Episode 235: Mangave

Mangaves are hybrids of two different succulent genera: Agave and Manfreda. Photograph: Jane Perrone.

Transcript

Episode 235

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Jane: This episode is supported by True Leaf Market, sellers of heirloom and organic garden seeds since 1974. The end of the gardening season is here and it's the ideal time to rehabilitate your garden soil by growing a cover crop. They're great value; buying enough cover crop seeds for most backyard gardens costs under $25, including shipping, and True Leaf Market offers a great selection of cover crop seeds, including their all-purpose garden cover crop mix, which is their most popular for home gardeners. To get a free PDF of True Leaf Market's beginner's guide to growing cover crops, visit TrueLeafMarket.com and search cover crop guide. Order your cover crops now at TrueLeafMarket.com enter promo code OTL15 to save 15% on your cover crop seeds. That's TrueLeafMarket.com enter OTL15 for 15% off. Some restrictions apply - see the show notes for full details.

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Jane: Hello and welcome to On The Ledge podcast episode 235 and we're looking at Mangaves. I'm joined by Dr Colin Walker, succulent expert, to talk about these fascinating intergeneric hybrids that are hitting garden centres and nurseries near you. Plus, I answer a question about spots on an Areca Palm.

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Jane: A rather delightful review from FR326 called me the "OG of plant podcasts" the other day! I'm not sure if that stands for 'Original Gangster' or 'Original Granny', perhaps more accurately, but thank you for your review! Thanks to those who've become Patreons this week; Christine became a Crazy Plant Person, True, Anja, Turquoise, Michael and Lou all became Ledge-ends. Find out more about becoming a Patreon of the show and getting ad-free editions of the main podcast, plus two bonus episodes a month, at my show notes at janeperrone.com

A couple of heads up: if you are in the London and Home Counties area, I'm at the British Library in London on 7th November, the evening thereof, joining in with a panel discussion about houseplants history, culture, all of those fascinating aspects we'll be discussing, chaired by friend of the show James Wong along with Carlos Magdalena of Kew Gardens and conservationist and fellow houseplant expert, Mike Maunder. You can watch on a live stream, or get an in-person ticket, so do check out the show notes for a link to that, to find out more. I'm holding a plant swap with another guest of the show, Sarah Gerrard-Jones, The Plant Rescuer, that's happening at a coffee shop in St Albans, in Hertfordshire, on Saturday 17th September, so only a week or so away, 10:30 to 13:00 and it's going to be a swap and a sale, with money going to good causes. Sarah and I are going to be selling off some plants and propagations from our own collections. I'll put a link to a blog post that I haven't yet written, but I will write soon, with more info on that!

Now on with the meat of the show, which is my interview with Dr Colin Walker discussing a plant that's becoming very popular with succulent collectors.

Colin: Hi! I'm Colin Walker! I'm past president of the BCSS and I've been growing, studying, writing about succulents for over 50 years. Agaves are one of my particular interests and Mangaves are kind of a modern offshoot of that.

Jane: Delighted to have you on the show, Colin, and this is an interesting one! Mangaves - I think this name might be new to some listeners but familiar to others. What exactly is a Mangave?

Colin: Just to rewind a bit, so, Agaves, just to refresh, are Century Plants, they come from America, the Americas, and are renowned for taking a long time to flower. So a common name is Century Plants because back in the 15th/16th Century, when these plants first came into cultivation, they took a long time to flower and, indeed, some of them maybe even took a hundred years, although that's not with very good cultivation, most will flower much quicker than that. So they are plants that take a while to come to flower. There are two main groups of Agave; so the standard true Agaves produce these very large flower spikes, some of them are like telegraph poles, and those are the true Agaves. There's a small group of about 40 species which have the name Manfreda, not to be confused with Mangave! Manfreda, some people consider this a distinct genus, Manfreda,others, like myself, consider it to be a subgenus of Agave but they are quite different to the true Agaves. True Agaves have these tall flower spikes, as I say, but the other characteristic feature is they have really tough leaves, they're absolutely full of fibres, a lot of them have sharp, jagged teeth and spines, whereas Manfredas tend to have very soft leaves, tiny teeth and no spines and some of them even are deciduous, they die down in the winter.

So there's two completely different groups of plants here. Mangave are hybrids between the two groups. So the name Mangavehas come from Manfreda, so the 'Man-' of Manfreda and the '-gave' from Agave, so Mangave, or crosses between Manfredasand Agaves, and those are called 'biogeneric hybrids'. The first one came quite by accident from seed brought in from Mexico that was thought to be a Manfreda. Some collector brought some seed pods back from a population of a Manfreda and when these seeds were raised, a couple of the seedlings behaved very differently to the rest. They were quite fast-growing, looked rather differently. When these were investigated, it was decided that these were an intergeneric cross, so they weren't just Manfredas they'd been crossed with a true Agave. In 2010, the genus was formally named Mangave, as I say, because it's crossed between Manfreda and Agave and the world has taken off since then.

The Japanese followed on quite quickly and they artificially produced a cross between Agave macroacantha, which is a gorgeous blue/grey Agave with dark purple black spines and teeth, and they crossed it with a Manfreda. So true Agaves have, as I say, tough leaves and a lot of Manfredas have spotted leaves and this first artificial cross produced in cultivation is intermediate between its two parents. It doesn't have really tough leaves, but they are quite strong, but they are spotted. So you've got a blue/green Agave with spotted leaves, tiny little teeth and that was called Bloodspot, so it's got sort of pale, blue-ish, purple-ish spots, which is very unusual for an Agave. That was the first one, really, that was brought into cultivation and marketed and, as I say, since then, these Mangaves have taken off and there's now quite a wide range of them in cultivation. These plants have only been around for a decade, a decade and a half, really, and they are becoming very popular.

Jane: I wanted to ask you about the relative merits of Mangaves versus Manfredas /Agaves. Do they have advantages and disadvantages over the separate genera?

Colin: Yes, they do indeed, Jane. I tried to say in my introduction that the true Agaves can take a long time to come to flower. I've been growing Agaves for 30-odd years now, I suppose, and I've only flowered about eight over that period because some do take a long time. So one of the really gorgeous Agaves is Agave victoriae-reginae. It is a very architectural plant. I've now flowered two plants and each time it's taken about 30 years, so it's a slow-growing plant and the flower spike is up to 3m / 3.5m tall, but that plant dies after flowering, it's monocarpic; a single rosette flowers and dies. So quite a lot of the Agaves take a long time to get to flower, particularly under my growing conditions here in Britain. So I can't plant Agaves outdoors where I live, so everything is pot-grown and that does kind of slow down the growth rate. If you live somewhere gorgeous, like California, you can plant your Agaves outdoors and they will come to flowering size relatively quickly. So, a lot of Agaves take a while to get to flowering size.

Manfredas are tricky in cultivation. There are only about 40 species. They're quite small-growing plants, quite a lot of them are not evergreens, so they die down in the winter and sometimes they don't regrow in the spring, so they can be a bit tricky. So true Agaves take a long time to grow to flowering size and Manfredas are a bit tricky in cultivation. Mangaves have features of both. So one of the key features about Mangaves is that they're quite fast-growing, so they're not as slow-growing as Agaves. I've only flowered one of these and it came to flower after about eight years, so that's quite fast and quite a lot of them pup as well. So although the flowering rosette dies, you've got pups to continue the plant. So the hybrid has the good features of both groups, so there's a lot going for them. Absolutely! That's why, in the horticultural trade garden centres, they are now appearing in quite high numbers because they've been able to grow these plants in America quite fast. Quite a few of these have been multiplied, propagated using tissue culture, but they do grow quite fast. I guess the fast growth rate is one of the big advantages of Mangaves and you can get them to flower relatively small and quite quickly.

Jane: Well, that's good to know. I think there's plenty there for us to get our teeth into. Do they take up a little bit less space? Most of them are a little bit smaller, I know Agaves really vary in size, but are they generally a little bit more suitable for the windowsill and windowsill growers?

Colin: I think windowsill-growing is maybe a bit tricky. I would suggest you need a windowsill about a foot wide, which none of mine are, that's for sure. They're probably better on the floor or in a conservatory than on a windowsill, as I say, unless you've got wide windowsills. Yes, in terms of size, they are generally significantly smaller than most Agaves. They're intermediate in size, between Manfredas and Agaves, but they can get big if you let them grow big, some of them, because they will pup to form quite large clumps. The one that I flowered, Bloodspot, was what, I would say, about 1 foot / 30 cm, so that's not huge, whereas some Agaves can be up to ten feet across, so they are modest-size compared to the average Agave.

Jane: You mentioned Bloodspot there, there seems to be a lovely array of different cultivars on the market now and I've certainly seen some of those at the shows and they seem to be, as you say, coming into garden centres and being more widely available, perhaps even more widely available than a lot of Agaves are actually. Are there any other cultivars, apart from Bloodspot, that you're particularly keen on?

Colin: Well, the very first one that was really marketed on a big scale, was Macho Mocha. So that's the one that was produced from this seed that was collected in the wild. That grows quite fast and forms quite large clumps quite quickly, so in terms of growth rate that's a good one. It has very soft leaves, no teeth at all, doesn't die down - that I haven't flowered yet. Bloodspot is an absolute favourite. That is a really gorgeous-looking plant. So, it has chunky leaves and these distinctive spots. One that has relatively recently come into cultivation over here, is called Silver Fox. It looks like a standard Agave but it has prominent teeth, although the leaves are not that rigid. It's got a really cool colour. It's been likened to stonewash blue denim, so it's sort of pale blue with teeth on the leaf edges and once it gets larger, it does have faint spots, but as a younger plant it's virtually spotless, so that's a very attractive one. Blazing Saddles has narrower, darker-green leaves, with quite prominent, pale-ish red spots as well. So, if you go to any garden centre in the UK, I think you'll find a selection of Mangaves. I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to advertise this? My local 'Dobbies' garden centre had about ten different ones, I suppose. I should warn, certainly listeners in the UK, these are not cheap plants. Dobbies charge about £25 a go. I don't know whether any other garden centres are any cheaper. I imagine that these plants are all imported from America, that's my take on this. A nursery called Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, North Carolina, is the go-to nursery. They have been marketing these plants. I would like to think there may be quite a lot of American listeners have already got the odd Mangave in their collection because I would expect them to be very widely known across the pond, so to speak.

Jane: I have a feeling that there are some Dutch nurseries producing Mangaves as well. I need to check that out, I may be speaking completely out of turn here, but I seem to remember that there are some Dutch nurseries producing them too. I'll have to look into that and I'll add anything I find in the show notes. I think they have a lot of characteristics that are going to make them attractive to buyers. I think that price tag you mentioned there, compared to some of the rarer Aroids and things, is not outrageous for a plant of that size and heft, really.

Colin: The plants at Dobbies were really healthy, Jane. Let me see now, some of these are nearly a foot across, so £25 quid for a plant that size, as you say, is not bad value, you're quite right, compared to other sought after... the Orchid world, people pay much, much more for the rarer Orchids, don't they, so that's not a bad price actually for these kind of plants? Going back to your Dutch Nursery thing, there's an interesting aspect to this, thinking about horticultural trade. These plants have been patented, so I'm not sure about Dutch nurseries here, I'm in unfamiliar territory, but I'm aware that the American-produced cultivars have been patented. So whether there is some deal with Dutch nurseries, I wouldn't know, but the other aspect of this is, of course, this is a burgeoning market. The word is out there that Agaves crossed with Manfredas giving us Mangaves is the way to go. So people with significant collections can produce their own hybrids, produce their own cultivars, patent their own crosses and so on. Just to give you a bit of background that we haven't talked about yet, the guy in America who has done a lot of this hybridising is called Hans Hansen. So although Tony Avent at Plant Delights Nursery in North Carolina is the organisation that's doing most of the marketing, the hybridisation work was actually done by this guy, Hans Hansen, so he needs to be credited with producing certainly all the Mangaves that are currently available at Dobbies, for instance.

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Jane: We'll be back with the subject of Mangaves shortly, but now it's time for Question of the Week and this one comes from Anikó from Budapest - thanks for your question Anikó! Now, this one concerns an Areca lutescens, commonly known as the Bamboo Palm, and Anikó has been worrying about brown spots on the stems which "could be scratched away but not very easily" and the plant also was suffering from curling, drying new leaves. This got Anikó worried, not surprisingly, fearing a pest infestation. Unfortunately, the plant didn't make it, but Anikó has been wondering what exactly was going on. Now, I thought I knew the answer to this one, but it's sometimes good to get the back-up of a real expert in the area and so I turned to Dr Scott Zona - aren't I lucky to have all these experts on hand!? - who is an absolute Palm expert. He's been on the show before, he's the co-editor of Palms, the Journal of the International Palm Society.

So the spots, these are naturally-occurring on the plant, rather than pests. Scott describes them as chaffy, or scaly, hairs, just the normal indumentum of the Palm. So what does indumentum mean? It just means a coating of hairs and you can also use it for feathers on a bird. These occur on the petiole, the leaf stem and the bases of the leaves but not on the stem. Scott writes: "Young plants offered in nursery are rarely big enough to have a visible stem. They are all leaf bases as in the photo (referring to the photo that Anikó sent through), so your listener is finding lots of 'pests'. Palms in a botanical garden are probably big enough to have trunks, on which there are no brown hairs." So that's referencing the fact that Anikó went to a botanic garden and saw this same Palm without the brown marks, so that explains what's going on there. So fascinating and so great to get that expert advice. So if your Areca lutescens has got these brown marks, don't panic, it's perfectly normal! I suspect, in the case of this listener's Palm, that probably conditions weren't quite right and that explains the curling and drying, rather than the brown marks being responsible, because as we've just heard, they're totally normal. If you do want some Palm-growing advice, do go back and listen to the Palm episode with Dr Scott Zona for loads of useful information.

As I always say, whenever you have a plant that's got curling leaves, that's usually a sign that something's going on at root level with moisture, whether the plant's completely waterlogged or, more often than not with this particular symptom, the plant isn't getting enough water and may also be experiencing some dry air into the bargain. So do give the Bamboo Palm another go, Anikó, if you dare, but don't worry about those brown spots, they're totally normal, so I hope we can reassure you on that.

I know I say this basically every week, but I'm going to say it again, a hand lens would be really useful in this circumstance because this is how you could look really closely at those brown marks. Under a hand lens you would see that they are just clumps of hairs rather than anything threatening in the way of pests, so invest in a hand lens people! I feel like a broken record, but there we go! I hope that helps, Anikó, and thanks so much for your question and I hope that helps to build your confidence with plants. If you've got a question for On The Ledge, drop me a line: ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com and if you can leave lots of info, that really helps me to find an answer to your question.

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Jane: One of the things I like about these Mangaves is they seem to have a good line in names! I was looking on the website madaboutmangave.com and looking at some of these names. I like the sound of Bad Hair Day! I'm looking at this plant, thinking, "That looks like a very tidy bad-hair day to me!". It's got these thin-ish, strappy leaves. There's a wavy one called 'Catch A Wave' and 'Blazing Saddles', which you've already mentioned, which is a great name! So you can have some fun with the names as well!

Colin: Just to wind back, something I forgot to mention right at the beginning was that I have a gorgeous plant which isn't actually a Mangave, it's a Manfreda, and this is called Chocolate Chip! I've sent you a photo for the programme notes and this is a true Manfreda, but it's a gorgeous cultivar and it has thin, crinkly leaves with dark, chocolate-coloured spots, hence its name. Unlike quite a few of the Manfredas, as I say, this keeps its leaves throughout the winter. Some of these plants though, if the temperatures get really low, will shed their leaves, so that's something to be wary about. These plants are not really hardy. Certainly in the UK you can't grow these in a garden. You can put them on the patio during the spring and summer but bring them indoors to a conservatory, or whatever, so that's an important cultivation tip; these plants are frost-sensitive, they will not survive outdoors, certainly in the UK. If you live in fabulous places like California, you don't have these problems, but I'm afraid in Scotland, there's no way I can maintain any of these plants outdoors.

Jane: If you do bring them indoors, presumably you don't want to bring them into a 20C room? You want to give them a cool, light spot indoors during winter?

Colin: Now, Agaves are very forgiving. So let's just consider the group as a whole. So all these plants are Agaves, but Mangavesare part of that, they're all very forgiving - well virtually all of them, there's one or two that are a bit tricky - but, generally, most of them are quite easy to grow. Whatever conditions you throw at them, they will thrive usually, apart from the important thing is they're frost-sensitive, that's the only thing, right? If you want to give them warm conditions, you can do. So when I was employed by the Open University and they paid my heating bill, I used to have Agaves, Mangaves included, in a greenhouse. The winter temperature never dropped below 15C and I used to water my Agaves and Mangaves right throughout the year and they'd grow in the winter, given enough light. Now, in Scotland, when I'm paying my own heating bills and we're in an energy crisis, so I'm dropping temperatures. If these plants can be maintained at 10 / 12C, which is what my conservatory is at, I give these plants some water during the winter, not as much as during the summer, so if you want to keep them in a heated room at 20C, so long as they get plenty of light, they need light as well as warmth, so yes, if they're kept at higher temperatures, you can water them, but they will survive frost-free and no water. So they are very forgiving plants, actually, in terms of growth requirements.

Jane: Yes, I keep my Agaves in the greenhouse over the winter and I think I had one that I nearly lost over the winter, for reasons I can't explain. Perhaps there was more moisture in the substrate than the others, which I'd stopped watering at the end of September, but it has actually recovered. The rest of them seem to be fine. Obviously, if we get a really cold winter, I may be in trouble and I may be dragging things into the house but, generally-speaking, those Agaves tend to be fine. It's good to hear that the Mangaves are similarly amenable. I guess the key here, we've talked about loads of light but also, presumably, you just need that nice, free-draining substrate to make sure that they don't hold on to too much water around the roots?

Colin: Absolutely. Yes, again, they're quite forgiving in terms of a compost. I have a mixture that's three parts John Innis to one part grit, that's my standard succulent compost. So, yes, reasonably well-drained, absolutely. Anything bought in a garden centre is probably grit-free, so a free-draining compost is fairly important. So if you buy a plant from a garden centre, repot it fairly quickly and use a compost that's got some drainage material in it. Grit is the best, but you can even use some cat litter as well, I use that sometimes for large plants because it reduces the weight of it.

Jane: We need to talk about propagation. These plants have plant breeders rights operating over them. Does that restrict what we are doing in terms of propagation? I guess we can propagate them but not sell them? Is that the rule?

Colin: Yes, I would say that, yes. Something like Macho Mocha forms clumps quite quickly, so they're easily propagated. We shouldn't be actually selling these to make a profit because they are covered by patent rights, that's for sure. Not all of them pup, certainly Bloodspot, which is the only one I've flowered so far, that didn't pup at all. So, being monocarpic, it flowered once and dies. It has been recorded that sometimes it does pup, so this is a bit random; sometimes you're lucky and a plant will pup and sometimes it doesn't. Some Agaves will produce pups, or bulbils, as they're called, on their flower spikes. I haven't encountered any reports of Mangaves doing that yet, but some of them might. It depends on which Agave parent has been used. There are two ways these named Mangaves can be propagated. So, if they produce pups, that's easy to do, or you might just be lucky you've got one that does produce bulbills on the flower spike, but I've, as yet, had no experience of my plants doing either.

Jane: My Agave collection, as yet, doesn't have any Mangaves in it. Would you recommend that Bloodspot would be a good place to start for my Mangave collection?

Colin: Absolutely. Bloodspot is one of the earliest ones and it is one of the most attractive, but they're all pretty cool plants. Silver Fox has such a distinctive colouring that that's one... anything that takes your fancy really! Most of them have spotted leaves, which does make them quite distinct compared to the true Agaves, so just buy anything that takes your fancy, really, and they are relatively trouble-free. They do just need a little bit more space than your average houseplant, but quite a lot of us have got houseplants that are quite tall and don't sit on windowsills. So long as they're close to a source of natural light, conservatories are best, but other light spots near a window are good as well.

Colin: Well, as you say, the energy crisis is probably making us all look at our electricity bills, so any plants that can survive 10 / 12C are probably quite welcome for those of us who are looking at the state of our electricity and gas bills for this winter! Well, it's delightful to speak to you, as ever, Dr Walker and I'm really glad that we've had this chat about Mangaves and, as usual, I've ended the episode with a big list of plants that I now want to buy! So thank you, but I curse you for your excitement about Mangaves because now I'm going to be going into the garden centre and coming back with a big boot-load of plants, I suspect, but at least they're fairly low maintenance that's for sure!

Colin: Christmas is coming, Jane! Ask your better half!

Jane: Well, he's very tolerant, but it's hard to sneak them in the house when they're big and spiky, that's the only trouble! Thanks so much, Colin!

Colin: You're welcome!

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Jane: Do check the show notes for more information on Mangaves and links to other episodes in which Dr Colin Walker has appeared. If you're a Ledge-end or a Superfan Patreon on Patreon, then shortly there will be An Extra Leaf episode featuring a more in-depth chat about intergeneric hybrids and the history of succulents and all sorts being put out for you to enjoy. For now though, that is it from On The Ledge. I will be back next Friday with more planty chat. Thanks for joining me. 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 Namaste, by Jason Shaw. All tracks are licensed under Creative Commons. Visit the show notes for details.

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Dr Colin Walker joins me to talk about Mangave, an intergeneric hybrid that’s relatively new to the succulent scene. Plus I answer a question about spots on an areca palm.

Three autumn 2022 events for your diaries...

On September 17 from 10.30am to 1pm I’m teaming up with Sarah Gerrard-Jones aka The Plant Rescuer to run a plant swap and sale at Fade To Black in St Albans, Herts. More details coming soon!

On October 22 I'm hosting a propagation workshop at the Garden Museum's Houseplant Festival. Join me for a hands-on session at 2pm - you'll end up with some props to take home! Book tickets here. 

On November 7, I'm taking part in a panel discussion on houseplants at the British Library, along with James Wong, Carlos Magdalena and Mike Maunder. Indoor Jungles: The Story of the Houseplant starts at 7pm, and livestream and in person tickets can be booked here. 

xMangave ‘Gonzaloi’. Photograph: Dr Colin Walker.

This week’s guest

  • Dr Colin Walker is the former president of the British Cactus and Succulent Society and has been growing cacti and succulents for 50-plus years.. 

  • Colin is retired now but he was a biologist at the Open University with research interest in cacti and succulents particularly in terms of biodiversity (here's his OU profile).

  • His book Aloes: The Definitive Guide, written with three other authors, was co-published in 2011 with Kew Gardens and the BCSS.

  • If you'd like to find out more about the BCSS, visit their website, Facebook page and Instagram account. Why not join and you'll have access to lots of expert advice, cheap seeds through their annual seed scheme and much much more?

  • You can hear Dr Colin Walker talking about Aloes and Agaves in On The Ledge episode 59 and Sansevieria in episode 187.

Mangave ‘Blood Spot’ in flower. Photoggraph: Dr Colin Walker.

Check out these notes as you listen…

  • Mangave (botanically speaking xMangave, a name awarded in 2010) are bigeneric hybrids between two different genera of succulents from the Americas: Agave and Manfreda.

  • There’s a video about the development of Mangave here. The madaboutmangave.com website is also full of useful info about these plants.

  • One advantage of Mangave is they grow faster than their parent genera: that also means they flower at a smaller size. They are intermediate in size between Agave and Manfreda.

  • Mangaves are monocarpic - they die after flowering. They sometimes produce ‘pups’ around the rosette which can be separated out to make new plants.

  • Mangave are suitable for growing indoors, in a conservatory or in a greenhouse, provided they get enough light - and lots of it! In winter, they can take low temperatures but will not tolerate frosts.

  • Popular cultivars include ‘Bloodspot’ ‘Macho Mocha’, ‘Blazing Saddles’ and ‘Silver Fox’: see below for images of some of these. Photographs are all copyright Dr Colin Walker.

  • Mangave plants are subject to plant breeders’ rights, which means you cannot sell any plants you propagate.

  • Dutch nurseries are starting to grow Mangaves as well as the American growers where they originated.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Brown marks on an areca palm stem

Anikó was concerned about brown spots on the stem of an Areca lutescens, the bamboo palm. I consulted Dr Scott Zona who confirmed that these marks are completely normal. Scott writes: Those "spots" are the chaffy or scaly hairs that occur normally on the plant. They are not pests; they're just the normal indumentum of the palm. The scaly hairs occur naturally on the petioles and leafbases, but not on the stem. Young plants offered in nursery rarely are big enough to have a visible stem. They are all leafbases (as in the photo), so your listener is finding lots of "pests." Palms in a botanical garden are probably big enough to have trunks, on which there are no brown hairs.

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

THIS WEEK’S SPONSOR

Thanks to True Leaf Market for sponsoring this week’s show. Download their free cover crop guide here. Get 15% off cover crop seeds at trueleafmarket.com with promo code OTL15. This discount is only available for cover crop seed products. Offer expires end of December 2022. Limit one use per customer.

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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 and Namaste by Jason Shaw. The ad music is Dill Pickles by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra.

Cacti & succulentsJane PerronepalmsComment