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Spider plants and their babies, or not

Just testing
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Spider plants and their babies, or not

Postby jeral » Fri Sep 21, 2012 6:58 pm

I thought there were male and female baby plants growing from the mother plant so that if a male was planted, then clearly no way would it produce babies. My mum thought that they just didn't produce babies if they were too old.

See, I reckon this baby one (given to me) that I recently planted is male (few but strong leaves rather that lots of spindly ones).

Anyone know? I wondered if they were like holly trees where you have to have a male and female sitting next to one another.

Hardly important, just curious.

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Re: Spider plants and their babies, or not

Postby Joanbunting » Fri Sep 28, 2012 1:51 pm

He Jeral

I have been meaning to answer your question for days but have finally got round to it.

Spider plants do not have male and female babies - they reproduce vegetatively.

Here's mine:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/62387678@N ... hotostream

The name refers to to Afro - Caribbean stories about Anansi the spider. My kids in the Bahamas used to love them and I told them to my own children and GCs

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Re: Spider plants and their babies, or not

Postby jeral » Sat Sep 29, 2012 10:36 pm

Hi and thanks. Strangely coincidentally I looked at the web last night (trying to get through a list of things) and the common view seemed to be that any spider plant (so no such thing as male and female) will send out babies if it has some age (so not a baby itself) and it should be kept potbound (emphasised) and in a position with lots of daylight, or bright sunlight. It goes without saying that no plant should be on a windowsill where strong sun would burn it through the glass.

I think it's the bright light I'm stumped by at this time of year. One person said they even shone an ultraviolet light on theirs given they had no light at all in a basement.

Anyway, it used to be said that they're supposed to be very good for cleaning the air, although for me I like plants that grow, not just static ornaments like some bromeliads, so I'd probably burgle you to get yours :)

---

As to the next item on my must find outs, an odd thing in Northfleet... Anansi now dutifully added.

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Re: Spider plants and their babies, or not

Postby jeral » Mon Oct 07, 2013 11:14 pm

Update. Teeny baby spider plant now has lots of babies 8-) I kept it potbound far longer than I'd normally leave anything, so I attribute the babies to that. Not yet the beautiful waterfall cascade that your plant is Joanbunting, although I'm keeping fingers crossed as long as it survives the dark light this winter.

Now I need to figure out how to coax my Christmas flowering cactus plant to bloom rather than managing a few buds most of which drop off, doh. Must be to do with watering or feeding or light - or something! I'll post a pic of the plant I'm on about at some point so all for now.

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Re: Spider plants and their babies, or not

Postby Joanbunting » Thu Oct 10, 2013 8:48 pm

Jeral. don't worry about your spider plant, they will survive almost anything - they have to chez moi!

Keep the water down on the cactus and keep it quite cool.

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Re: Spider plants and their babies, or not

Postby jeral » Fri Oct 11, 2013 2:58 pm

Hopefully you're right about the spider plant :mrgreen: Mind you, it will have to survive now it has babies to support ;)

You are right about the cactus as I found this link complete with care instructions: http://www.humeseeds.com/xmasccts.htm
Image
Keeping it at 50°F could be a problem, although with our energy prices going up enormously yet again, my whole place could struggle to be above that :( Still, the flowers will cheer me up.

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Re: Spider plants and their babies, or not

Postby jeral » Tue Oct 22, 2013 4:14 pm

For my Christmas Cactus, one of the care instructions to encourage it to flower at Christmas was to put it somewhere with daylight only, so no artificial light after sunset. Moved my plant accordingly and lo and behold it's a different plant after just two days with all stems standing up proudly rather than somewhat languidly almost trailing. (Minimal temp diff, just light diff.)

I'd always assumed too little light could be a problem, never thought that too little darkness could be. Who'da thunk it? Too early to celebrate since not due to flower till Christmas...

Going to try to figure out cyclamens currently in flower next.

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Re: Spider plants and their babies, or not

Postby Joanbunting » Tue Nov 05, 2013 3:07 pm

Cyclamens easy Jeral. Keep them cool, mine stay outside and only water when the flowers start to droop.

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Re: Spider plants and their babies, or not

Postby jeral » Tue Nov 05, 2013 6:08 pm

Thanks for that. I don't mind once the flowers go on cyclamen as the leaves themselves are so attractive :)

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