Wandering Jew
By balcony
15 comments
I’ve grow different species of this plant for many years. Some had thick purple leaves with the most delightful bright pink 3 lobed flowers, others had white & green stripes & this one which has purple backsides to the leaves but deep green & grey stripes on the front.
I even have one that is plain old green but is smaller than any of the others I’ve grown.
There is a little story associated with this one. A couple of years ago my daughter bought me a Venus Flytrap for my birthday. She put it in a plastic bag in which she also put a bottle of cologne water she had bought. Somehow the cap of the bottle came off & some of the “water” got into the plant. She only realized when she went to give me it!
For a couple of days the Venus Flytrap didn’t seem any the worse for having been “watered” with this. They I noticed that it was beginning to look sick & within a couple of weeks it had died. :(
I left the pot on the windowsill in the kitchen for another week or so & when I thought about throwing it away I discovered a leaf in the centre of the pot! Thinking perhaps by some miracle of nature some part of the plant had survived I left it where it was. Sometime later I checked it out again & it had grown several leaves! A few weeks I realized it was a small Tradescantia. Intrigued I left it alone to grow & it soon filled the pot.
Now I have several pots of it in the living room. I’ll take a couple of photos tomorrow & include them in this blog.
Promise honoured!
- 21 Aug, 2009
- 9 likes
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Comments
I've always called this plant 'wandering sailor'...pretty apt really as I married one! Now a non-wandering homebod! Your trad looks really healthy.
21 Aug, 2009
That's what I call it too!
21 Aug, 2009
I don't call it anything as I haven't the faintest idea what it is but it looks lovely draped all over the fridge. It's got to make getting at the beer a bit more difficult though?
What? do you put something else in the fridge then?
21 Aug, 2009
That is a very healthy Wandering Jew and obviously likes where it lives..........
21 Aug, 2009
Seen my avatar Balcony? That's a Zebrina and mine was given to me by my Spanish neighbour when we finally moved here. I took cuttings early this year and the little niche on the other side of the porch is quickly filling up just like the one in my avatar. I also have the lovely sturdy purple non-trailing version in a pot, given as a cutting from my daughter in the south of Spain, and I brought with me from Britain a garden variety which grows taller, loves shade and has three-petalled blue flowers which I was given as a "freebie" by a mail-order nursery. They are rather special aren't they.
22 Aug, 2009
In our house Ian we have a seperate beer fridge & the only things allowed on that are magnetic church keys...!
22 Aug, 2009
Lol, Church keys on the beer fridge?
22 Aug, 2009
My husband's naval term for bottle openers....they open the door to the kingdom of heaven...I know, I know...sailors eh?!
22 Aug, 2009
and thick geordies, Fluff. I don't know how many times I've heard that phrase over the years but it just didn't 'click' ? ? ?
22 Aug, 2009
Sorry, Nariz, I had never looked that closely at your avatar. Now you have mentioned it I have looked closer & it does look like my Tradescantia.
Yes, the one I've posted here is indeed Tradescantia Zebrina.
If you look in my garden you will see the other two photos I promised of the plain green Tradescantia. No idea though of the rest of its botanical name. I had a look in my A-Z of Garden Plants but I can't find a description on this one. Even though it's plain green the undersides are dark purple. I find the green quite "charming" & the leaves are very shiny with a hint of the purple underside shining through.
22 Aug, 2009
I used to have several types of them but now I only have one. They don't seem so popular now.
23 Aug, 2009
The plants in the kitchen are in 7 pots & each pot has at least half a dozen cuttings in it. Although it is recommended that you pinch out the shoots to make them bushier I never do. I wait till they begin to be a bit of a nuisance & start to want to grow along the worktop before chopping off about 50 cm.
They are rather miraculous at surviving because the stem can dry off at the base in the pot but you wouldn't realize it till a couple of months later! I often root a cutting from these dying stems which can reach a metre in length!
This year I have fertilized them much more often than I have ever done in the past & they have responded very, very well! Not just by growing longer but by having a much more luminous colour to them.
23 Aug, 2009
I'll have to start feeding it then.
23 Aug, 2009
Very much worth the while, Hywel! you wouldn't believe the difference it makes.
23 Aug, 2009
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That's amazing! And it's a lovely plant!
And you got it from Venus, you say? Hmmmmmmmm!
21 Aug, 2009