so my 'mature' syngonium cutting has poped-up another leaf. and i took a pic a day to show how they unfold.
and this is just a 5 lobed leaf. i wonder how the 9-lobed does it?

Hi
I grow both the pink and the white types . IME as soon as they develop the 3 lobed leaf the variagation is gone but
you can take a cutting fron the tip and new grow will revert
to a single spade shaped leaf with various shades of variagation and the process starts over.
I've tried to rid myself of these my cutting the main stem
They respond by turning epiphytic lol
Were they are growing up palms I've tried snipping the tips while they will revert to colored , short duration and doubles the growth directions lol They will happily strangle whatever they're growing on lol
When pruning I keep them in separate bags as the least bit will sprout again!! gary

so an update on how my mature syngonium cutting behaving.
the first 3 new leaves retained mature form, then with each new leaf they started loosing 2 leaflets. the latest is just a tri-leaf.
on each node there are aerial roots that dry up in a few weeks if not attached to anything. so i finally attached each node to the stake wrapped in coir fiber - to see if roots will develop further and if this will make any difference to leaf development.
here's a latest pic.
overall the plant looks quite good. though there's still problem with unrolling and it got a bad case of greenhouse thrips...

ok, it really liked a bit of coir wrapping - already a big root curled around the stake thru coir clenching tight...close to 1" in a week! i put it even closer to the window in more light.
hope that it will stop reducing the leaf-count!

Are you bagging this?

Interesting info on the aerial and the choir. Suspected it would happen but it's always nice to get confirmation. :)

it was bagged while i was rooting it, but after it started growing the last few months i let it free :). it's about 70% -75% humidity right now. the good thing about coir matting is that you can wrap it easily and misting re-wets it very well and quickly. so for now i just mist a little ev few days or more - just to see how the aerial roots respond. it's a bummer that the number of leaflets is reducing. i will extend the stake higher and make sure each node has some roots developing. and then we'll see what's next.
i also want to try a spiral bend-wire stake instead of straight pole - it provides more length in less height.
once it grows a dozen leaves i'll chop it in half , reroot and see what it does to leaflet-count.

has anybody noticed, exoticrainforest site does not load anymore... pity.
guess, they won't be keeping it up anymore?
considering there was so much good info there, it's a shame.

Steve used to run that on his own. But now he's gone guess no one wants to keep up payments for the URL and the server space. Pity IAS didn't take it over as their site leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to information/images of aroids.

a follow up on my syngonium: the vine got so-o long and at each node where i wrapped some coir fiber around it - it produced good long aerial roots. so i took a large plastic tub, put moist long fiber sphag in it and curled the long vine covering aerial roots somewhat. then bagged the tub and tied the plastic bag around the main stem (still attached). in a month i had REALLY giant aerial roots going thru sphag. some were so long that i had to trim them :). so i then cut vine between nodes and planted 5-6 cutting together in 6" pot: came out to 2 pots. i bagged them again for a month. and here's what it looks like:
the pot with older nodes sprouted new leaves faster, it's now working on a 2nd set of leaves. all new leaves are very extended arrows, some almost triple, but not quite, and all have good variegation.
the only exception is the very tip cutting - it is green, just barely visible white line in the center and a real triple still. the same with a shoot that came out of older plant (the original vine) - green and a triple.

Very cool!!! TY for the update!

Let me get this straight...the new growth is still showing the characteristics of mature leaf forms.

That IS interesting!

sort of ... the lobes are declining steadily, but the decline of number of leaf-lobes is not immediate, but after a few leaves the next comes out a bit shrunk. so after 12? leaves instead of 5ers with ears i have joined triples with ears, and variegation became strong immediately on 1st leaves of 'new-cuts'.
the only exception is the very tip of the original vine that had 1 leaf and original growing tip that i did not cut - it still opened 2 triples with ears and plain green - so no change in form yet.
the original plant that had only 5ers on it - opened up 2 lobed + 1 webbed leaf, and then webbed tricorns but plain green.
so on the last pic you see cuttings of nodes with single leaf that all were triples with clear 3 petioles+ears, but all new sprouted leaves have sudden variegation and the webbing connecting 3 lobes, so they are like tricorns, not arrows. though all leaves have still 'little horns'.. sort of little ears that are mini-divisions. you prolly can't see them well. i need to take a closer pic.
here's what i am talking about:
this is an older triple leaf with ears, showing very faint variegation.

Fascinating!

tropic,
i came upon this aussi article about a diff variety of syngonium :
s. angustatum. which is quite hard to distinguish unless you have flowers to compare. but it seems to have narrower and smaller juvie leaves by comparison and it multi-lobes sooner.
could my 'weed' be a s.angustatum?
what do you think? some of my new growth is quite miniature: central longest lobe only 2-3" and IS rather narrow. but the pics that i saw when googling show extreemly narrow leaves.
i don't yet have 'a single leaf' per se - only 'connected tri-lobes'.
so perhaps in a couple of months they'll totally revert. and i'll know better.

Here is a link that might be useful: syngonium weeds in au

This post was edited by petrushka on Fri, Oct 3, 14 at 13:22

There's so much variation in Syngonium podophyllum that it'd be difficult to tell. I checked and there are about 36 accepted species of Syngonium, 2 of them are angustatum and angustifolium. I know "angustifolium" means narrow leaf, but not sure what is narrow with angustatum. So maybe your answer will only come with time.

How are things going with folks' vines?

When my plants get back outside soon, I'll have some progress updates on some vines. Too hard to get pics while crammed inside.

When I had those tall trees cut out the tallest/longest Epipremnum aureums went along with them. But I put a lot of cutting up against other smaller trees. Same with Philidendron lacerum. Never planted any Syngoniums anywhere but they're rocketing along anyway. Just wish some of my other vining aroids would grow as fast.

i wanted to try to grow larger leaves on my epipremnum aureum.

i have 2 6" pots and i trained the vines vertically and then kept dropping the older vine down and keeping the last 6 feet vertical. so finally i have a couple of very strong ones that increased the leaf size from 4" to 8"! i'd say the total length of vines is 15-20', they are growing attached to shelves in west window - so very good direct sunlight, though i shade it with slats in summer, when it gets very hot (85F-90F by the window).

they are still in original 6" pots, BUT i keep them above water reservoir - so they grew water roots down into water. and that's how i keep them without re-potting.

That's totally cool! You do the most interesting experiments! Could you explain more about the dropping part? I think I get what you're saying, but not totally sure, or how you do it.

I'd love to see a pic from a bit farther back. (But I've got a lot of nerve to ask that when I haven't put any update pics in so long. Oops!) Will try to remember to get some in the morning. It's too hot & the shadows are too harsh right now.

Did you ever find any more info about your Syngoniums?

oh, well.i had to go and clear up access to the vine...it's out of bounds ;)

i just eased it back down , so it hangs on a zig-zag, so it went lower, shorter. so i had room to keep it growing up. then i sent it sideways for 6', and then back up again.

and looped like so

and by the way, now i am thinking of dropping that loop into a tub with moist long sphag to root it before the cut off. so i'll have a large-leafed cutting to send up again! i think the thickness of the vine matters. the thicker the stronger, and leaves are larger too.

i had 2 large leafed ends before (for these pots). and i'll do that again.

nope on syngoniums - but that is the next pictorial :). some interesting stuff happening.

TYVM! That's so cool! I'd say you've taken the lead on this, can't wait to see what happens next! (And the Syngonium update, when ready.) I think your point about getting to the fattest possible stems is a good one.

Went to take pics of what vines are doing & couldn't find much, especially that would have any meaning in a pic. This Philo is going crazy, but there's way too much mass, too
many individuals to try to see what any particular one is doing, even though I've given away cuttings about 10x since putting this pot together. Continually winding the stems
up/down/around, and back again, doesn't seem to inspire this particular
plant to make its' biggest leaves. Not as big as when it was paired with a Dracaena tree, growing up its' short trunk. But I do like the solid mass of plant, visually. Totally glad I did this. (And, FWIW, the oak branch has been in the pot for 3 yrs, surprised it hasn't rotted & fallen by now.)

looking great!. have you thought of making a xmas tree out of it :) ? using bean poles and netting may be?

my pot with original cuttings dried up, but i kept it slightly moist and it produced 2 leaves after 5 months! the 2nd is already triple-lobed - very fast. and they are very narrow.

so i think it's either S.angustatum or angustifolium (can't distinguish the two yet).

the other two pots are growing vigorously and leaves are increasing the lobes (remember, they were declining on original plant?).

but only 1 top-cutting (from original top) is vining and producing aerial roots like before.

the others have short nodes and roots are going into soil. there's variegation on all, except the original tip - that is the only one with big 5 lobes. but others will catch up soon, i think.

see the 5-lobed one on top? it's really shooting up!

i found some fatter more variegated leaves too - that would be from the 'youngest end of original vine'. but they are much longer too.

and finally,

i got a very pretty, but very very slow growing variegated S. 'Emerald Gem' in florida.

seems, i can't produce aerial roots on nodes, no matter what. only the tip is growing. and the original growth at the base declined leaving me with an albino (no more then 2 leaves at a time). so now i am afraid to cut off the tip - since albino by itself will not survive.

i rooted the tip ok - it's in a sep but connected pot and now am waiting to see if another node will decide to bud up. i have keiki paste for orchids that induces budding - i will have to use it, i think. that little green thing next to albino is a sep shoot - from almost dead piece of vine in the pot. for now it's just green, but may be it'll get some white in time. or so i hope.

so, that's the news.

i just love that row of inflo's on the first pic!

Me TOO Petrushka!

Tropic,..just how old IS that thing???

And here I've been cutting my philos back to practically their size when I bought them, lol. Maybe next year I'll find one good vine to leave attached to the wood stand then cut the rest back. It did start to get a little crazy in there though, the stems were huge but all of the foliage was blocking out the light. I got a lot of potted philos out of it. I've never been able to keep a moss pole moist enough to train anything up it. The only reason my Philo did it is because it lives under a fish tank, rooted into the sump water. It's been living without soil for the better part of...3 years maybe 4. The tank has no fish in it...fancy goldfish will break your heart with their sweet puppy dog antics and very short lifespans :(

I hadn't been fertilizing it, but occasion it would drop some desiccated leaves into the water and as the bacteria broke that down, it gave the plant more nutrients. I'm planning on giving it something I just discovered this year....fish emulsion. (I haven't been planting for quite some time. In fact, I had a really nice pothos that I stuck in a different tank at the same time I did the Philo, the pothos died because the fish in that one were eating it's roots or something ridiculous. I was pretty upset...that was my first plant so I had had it longer than my Philo. But me and Philo, we're tight.)

Asleep, Bit hard to say how old that vine is. When I got my place the gardens were being over run with Syngonium. I ripped most of it out but left two patches, sort of behind a "ceasefire line". Not that they honoured the ceasefire, stems of Syngonium go a long way underground and bits that get broken off become new plants. So it's an ongoing job to keep them under control. They were always flowering so can't really say how old they need to be for that.

This is part of one area I let some grow, it's a dead tree trunk which I suspect the Syngonium killed anyway. Other trees nearby I keep stripping the plants off, except for another large dead trunk. The rest sprawls across the ground.

Cool pic Tropic! I guess what made me wonder was the thickness of the vine pictured above...what's that like an inch or more? all I can say is wow!

The vines are only about 15 mm diameter. (Mr Google says 15 mm is 0.590551181 inches.) Epipremnum aureum gets much thicker vines, but they don't have the same "strangler" effect that Syngonium does.

Okay,..not as thick as I had originally surmised,but still pretty thick.

I totally know what you mean about the epipremnum,..when I was living on the gulf coast within walking distance of the beach,I would pass by a neighbor's place pretty regularly,and a potted specimen had fallen off a rail,and had been left to it's own devices. It threw vines in the direction of the nearest tree and up up up it went. Once a foothold had been established,those vines got massive in girth. Naturally the leaves were huge as well.

...think I might have mentioned this on the previous thread...but it bears repeating. :)

laticauda, is your Philo a heart-leaf vine? They don't need a moist pole to cling to, they'll cling to anything, probably even a person if they stand still long enough. I've seen them cling to painted inside & outside walls, aluminum siding, painted metal, dead & live wood, plastic hanging pot...

Even if a vine doesn't want to cling, they can all be put on a trellis.

(Philo 'Brazil, P. erubescens.)

Thank you Tiffany!

I found this to be true when I went to go check on my beloved heart vine downstairs. One of the vines had attached to the wall as it escaped from under the aquarium stand. The only way I think to stop them from doing it is if it's very dry in the air.

I'm trying to train one of my vines up a bamboo pole.

SOME OF MY POHA BERRIES ARE RIPE. THEY ARE SO DELICIOUS! Sorry, my husband brought them in like "what's wrong, they fell off the plant" and I'm like "THEY'RE RIPE! LET'S EAT EM!" My first time trying them. I think this particular package was called cape gooseberry. They are so good. Better than strawberries I think! I grew them from seed.

This vine was trying to creep it's way to the window which is off screen to the right by about 6 feet. This vine comes from under the aquarium, around the side of it and more than half way across the front. It's easily 7 feet long. It's just too bad I cut all the thick, more mature growth and left this dinky thing! It'll get there lol, now I have it running up to the top of the aquarium. Hopefully it'll attach to the wall up there behind the aquarium.

As long as you don't mind needing to paint the wall when/if the Philo comes off, sounds great!

Already have to repaint that room and possibly replace some drywall from a fish tank we had there. We had a big canister filter on it and the outflow made such a disturbance that it splashed a circular spot on the dry wall that eventually mildewed. So now, it's going to be my tropical plant paradise, God willing lol.

i have some news about my 5-lobed syngonium that gradually reverted to single arrow-leaf with variegation on cuttings.

all cuttings are now back to 5-lobed leaves - so in one year it went back to many lobes and most leaves still have a bit of white in the center.

and here is an overall view - very robust vine it is!

There's one thing they're consistent with, variability.

Digging your update, Petrushka!!

I traded for a little cutting of maturing Syngonium recently. Wasn't sure it was going to live at first, but it looks like it's no longer suicidal. Pulled it up to put in a pot after taking the pic. Probably doesn't need a trellis until next year...

What are folks' up-vines doing this year?

This is the biggest heart-leaf Philodendron leaf I've managed to find on my plants. (P. hederaceum/scandens/oxycardium.)

My Heart-leaf Philo is growing well but just about all the leaves are up top and stems bare.

I have no idea how long any of these vines are... they've been wound up, down, around, and back again too many times to figure that out.

An update on the mature, split-leaf Syngonium (last pictured 11/15.) It is reverting to juvenile. This is the oldest leaf at this point. The lobe to the left is separate but the one to the right is connected.

The leaf it grew after that, both lobes are connected.

And the next newest leaf (the newest unrolled leaf) is showing more connection, less definition of the lobes. At least it finally seems to be happy, retaining the older leaves much longer, but I don't have much hope that I'll have a specimen with mature, split leaves. I think the cutting may have been too small. Nowhere near being able to make use of a trellis yet.

OTOH, a pink pot-mate does need a trellis soon, and is making some much bigger leaves, 3-5x as big as the others and its' lobes are becoming more defined and elongated.

"i wanted to try to grow larger leaves on my epipremnum aureum."

In nature, the plants remain juvenile while sprawling on the ground until they begin climbing up a tree and then the successive increases in leaf size are large. When mature, the leaves are up to 39 in long and 18 in wide with slits similar to the slits of monstera deliciosa but fewer.

I have tried to find scientific papers about the mechanism of transformation but could find none. If there is a hormonal signal between the climbing process and the terminal bud, it should be possible to cause maturation without climbing by exogenous application of some chemical plant growth regulator (PGR) while the vine is relatively short. People have been able to slightly increase leaf size with the (PGR) uniconazole:

http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/27/3/222.full.pdf

tiffany,

if you wait long enough for your 'mature' syn to grow - it should slowly go back to increasing the number of lobes. at least that's what mine did - went back to 5 lobes. but they are super fast growers and get too unmanageable. i gave away one of mine - have no room for it! but for the 2nd i decided to bring it back to juvie form - as i like the variegation better. so i cut off the tips and am rooting them. meanwhile the plant is producing new shoots with less lobes, but MORE variegation.

Hey, good to hear from you, TY, Petrushka! You prob have a good point about unmanageability & being careful about that for which I wish. I do love the pretty variegation/colors and don't have unlimited space either, during winter. Will add a new pic when I get these plants moved to a bigger pot w/ a trellis.

Mine are the same, the more juvenile the leaves the more the tendency to variegation.

they tend to have very long petioles, no matter how much light they get - so they are rather ungainly on a trellis - too sparse. and even when you have a lot of vines - they look kinda disorderly and ungainly. up a tree looks ok, but they prolly need a very large trellis!

but you can put them in the ground for the summer to grow fast up smth and then cut off the tips to overwinter.

The received-as-mature cutting has moved into fast-moving vine mode:

I did put a pink individual at the base of this tree for summer (grounded in late March or early April.) It started going up, fell to the ground, took root again on the other side & is going up in 2 places now.

Original roots growing a newer upward vine.

Where it took root after falling, and then continuing upward.

That's a familiar sight in my garden. "Another job, when I get the time!"

I combined the above pot that has a red Philo & Syngoniums starting to "go vine" with the Philo on the L in this pic:

Added a tomato cage: