Underappreciated Plants : Monadenium stoloniferum

There are several plants in the nursery that are profoundly overlooked, under appreciated and seldom bought....

and I have no idea why.

I need to talk about it.

But I've decided to write about it....because...plants can't read. (Yet.) And I don't want to hurt their feelings. 

But I have to get to the bottom of WHY these wee succulent plants are so often overlooked. Or maybe why I feel the need to constantly work on these plants when the popular ones are raising their little leaves saying....What about us?! 

Maybe that's a whole different issue. I should discuss that in a non-plant related blog, probably.

Anyway.....Monadenium stoloniferum.

This week's Most Unappreciated Plant!

Monadeniums are now being classified as Euphorbia...but they'll always be their own genus to me. Monadenium stoloniferum has all the things people love....

the foliage is pretty....

...the flowers are pink and odd looking....

.....it easily forms a weird looking caudex...

....it doesn't go dormant...

......and it's SO EASY!

Maybe it's out of guilt but I have been playing relentlessly with this plant. You really can do so much with it. At the risk of sounding like Bubba talking about shrimp...

You can braid it, trim it, starve it, dry it out, mutilate the caudex, prune it terribly, forget about it, give it too much water, pickle it with fertilizer, leave it in the same pot for an eternity.....and it still looks cool. And it doesn't die if you give it a funny look or talk too loudly near it like some other fussy plants. Or if you drop it under the bench, trod on it, and forget to pick it up for a month. Oops.

So here's our plant, un-potted, revealing a surprisingly cool caudex hiding under the soil.

You can even braid those funny stems...

 This next poor fellow seems to have a conjoined twin at the top...and he's really got to get his own pot. He's probably a huge buzzkill for his chubby big brother.  Fortunately the survival rate of this surgery on this plant is pretty much 100%....so, let's do it!

Wow....complicated. And then, there were two! 

This next guy had a couple tubers that I thought would look better clumped together. So....I smushed them all together and voila! It's now all grown together. It's pretty rare things turn out the way I envision!

So, this adorable little plant (that's so durable, versatile, aloof to torture and neglect and welcoming to suffocating love and attention.....) is consistently ignored. It has never gone home with anyone, ever, no matter how many sales I take it to and how much marketing I do...I don't even think Brad Pitt's agent could work with this little fellow...and I dare him/her to try. 

In the words of Bubba, who could just go on and on about shrimp like I could about this little plant......

Stay tuned for next week's Underappreciated Plant! 

(This may not be what they meant in Marketing/Advertising 101....but I'm a grower, not a saleswoman.....)