This new arrival on the UK market is weird and wonderful, but it really grows on youWith the huge surge of new tropical plant introductions flooding into the trade right now, it is probably the most exciting time in a century to be a houseplant collector. I wonder if this is what it felt like to be a head gardener of a grand estate in Victorian England, when plant hunters were sending back a flurry of new introductions from all over the globe that had never been seen in Britain before. During the first few years of the recent houseplant renaissance, many “new” plants were, in fact, just 1970s staples making a long-overdue comeback, but suddenly there seem to be dozens of truly “new” species, even entire genera, entering the UK market for the first time. There are dozens to pick from, but it’s hard to think of one that’s more weird and wonderful than the huperzia.I first saw these amazing plants at a roadside plant stall high up in the mountains of rural Borneo in the early 2000s. Growing upside down straight out of the bottom of wire hanging baskets were Rapunzel-like cascades of what looked just like fluffy green pipe cleaners. Proper cartoon Martian stuff. One of the earliest forms of land plant, the huperzia has a wonderfully primitive growth pattern called bifurcation, where its tips literally split in two, giving its branches a forked “Y” shape. The interesting thing is that this isn’t just the case in the parts above ground as even the skinny, white roots are a fuzzy mass of forks. Continue reading…
Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Green and hairy, huperzia is a real delight
