Question

Which plant is described by these clues? The genus name joins two Greek words meaning loving and tree, for the way these plants clasp trunks and haul themselves up into the canopy. Hundreds of minute flowers are packed onto an unbranched fleshy club, and that club is wrapped by a single large modified leaf rather than opening as separate showy blooms. Every tissue is loaded with bundles of needle-sharp crystals, so a chewed leaf fires a burst of microscopic splinters into the lips and tongue rather than poisoning by chemistry alone. Its flowers are of two sexes on the same fleshy club, sorted into a female band at the bottom, a sterile band in the middle and a male band above. Each new leaf is pushed out inside a papery sheath that dries and falls away once the blade has unfurled, and the leaf stalk left behind is smooth and round in section. It climbs on a slender stem with long gaps between the leaves, throwing out roots at every joint that grip bark and also feed, so it lives with roots both in the ground and out of it. The blades are thin, glossy and plain green on both faces, heart-shaped with a drawn-out tip, reaching about 12 inches (30 cm) on a mature climbing stem but staying far smaller on a hanging one. In the wild it hauls itself 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 m) up rainforest trees from southern Mexico through Central America to the Caribbean and northern South America. Its epithet likens it to ivy, for the same habit of clinging its way up a trunk with a small dark heart-shaped leaf. It is one of the two plants most often muddled on windowsills the world over, sold for decades under two other Latin names, and told from its golden-variegated rival by the papery sheath on each new leaf.

Accepted Answer

Philodendron hederaceum

Name That Plant #054