Hello Hive World. This is the 5th Edition of this personal series called "My Plant of the Week." Each week for the last 4 weeks I feature a plant of choice which may or may not be in my wife's garden. It could be a plant in my office, in a friend's house or something I saw along the way to somewhere. It's a series I hope can keep you informed of the different plants in my place and uses for them, if any, aside from the aesthetics.
For this 5th edition I am featuring a plant I saw in another house. I really don't know what attracted me to it but somehow my attention was caught. Here it is.
It must have been the sheen plus the undecided reddish greenish purplish color of the leaves that gave this plant an intriguing aura. I looked around and there were others planted around the area and also noticed that they appear to be tall plants when fully grown.
I immediately asked the caretaker if I can pick a plant for me to bring home. She agreed and appeared to be happy that I asked. So I picked up one with the roots, for me to plant later when I got home.
The caretaker did not know the name of the plant so I Googled it and found out that this plant is called Cordyline Fruticosa. Other common names are palm lily, cabbage palm and ti plant (not to be confused with tea plant). This palm like plant is indeed a tall one. It can grow upto as high as 4 meters or a little over 13 feet. It has numerous color variations from plants with red leaves to green and any hue in between these 2 colors. That's what attracted me to it in the first place. The color of the leaves just seem undecided whether to be green or purple or red and they have a shiny gloss that enhances this colorful confusion, if you can call it that. The leaves are clustered spirally and fan-like with very slender trunks.
Now I also found out that this Ti plant has edible and medicinal uses. You can view these uses on this link:
http://tropical.theferns.info/viewtropical.php?id=Cordyline+fruticosa
But to summarize Ti plants are effective for so many ailments including inflammation, swelling, colds and coughs, eczema, stomach-ache, gastritis and even high blood pressure. The link provided above explains how the parts of the plant are used for various sicknesses.
The small plant I got is now temporarily potted, waiting for it to get back its strength. By then we would have decided where to plant it. Meanwhile, here it is now:
It was transplanted almost two weeks to this day and appears to have recovered already.
But I was still curious about how this plant will look like fully grown. Will it be really tall? Will it still have its color indecisiveness? Will it be a beauty? All these questions have now been answered last Saturday. I was walking home when I noticed one of our neighbor's plants lined up along his wall. Ti Plants. Not just one but two, three, four and more.
Now this I want planted in the garden. There's no doubt it's going to be tall, with color variations of the leaves within the same plant, and it's going to be a beauty. I probably will schedule another visit to my friend's house to ask for more planting materials. She did say if I wanted more just drop by.
And that's all for this edition of My Plant Of The Week. I hope you enjoyed it. For those who have missed some or all of the previous editions, and would want to read them, here are the links.
First Edition - A Superhero Marvel
Second Edition - A Pungent Beauty
Third Edition - Gentle Giants
Fourth Edition - Suffused With Succulents
Do follow me as I feature the different plants this side of the globe. Meanwhile please stay safe. Hope to see you again in one of my weekly features.
(All photos are mine.)