{"id":8598,"date":"2016-08-15T07:00:18","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T11:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newprocontainers.com\/blog\/?p=8598"},"modified":"2016-08-11T10:09:32","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T14:09:32","slug":"when-is-a-pothos-not-a-pothos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oldm2.newprocontainers.com\/blog\/when-is-a-pothos-not-a-pothos\/","title":{"rendered":"When Is a Pothos Not a Pothos?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"page-intro\">When is a pothos not a pothos? The answer is when it\u2019s an <em>Epipremnum aureum<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Actually,\u00a0there are several answers to this question. Others include when it&#8217;s a\u00a0<em>Scindapsus aureus, Rhaphidophora aurea, Philodendron nechodomii<\/em>, or even a <em>Epipremnum pinnatum v. aureum<\/em>. And then there is also\u00a0devil\u2019s ivy, devil\u2019s claw ivy, ivy arum, golden efeutute, hunter\u2019s robe, money plant, Ceylon creeper, taro vine, Solomon Islands ivy, and\u00a0centipede tongavine to name a few.\u00a0Any combination of any of these\u00a0plants are\u00a0simply referred to as\u00a0a \u201cpothos.&#8221; Maybe we should call it <em>The Little Jungle Weed That Could.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In 2004, aroid botanist, Peter Boyce, established that the <em>Epipremnum aureum&#8217;s<\/em> origin was on Mo&#8217;orea Island, French Polynesia. So we\u2019ll assume that&#8217;s its home ground. It was just one of the legions of <em>liana,<\/em> the name for woody climbing tropical vines, but it had big plans for the future. All this plant needed was for one little piece of its foliage to get broken off, float away on a piece of tree limb to a neighboring island, get caught up in a piece of clothing, and it was off and running.<\/p>\n<p>In the wild, <em>Epipremnum aureum<\/em> can grow up to 66\u2019 long with stems 2\u201d in diameter and leaves up to 39\u201d x 18\u201d. The stems grow up on trees, clinging by means of aerial roots that are specially adapted to adhere to surfaces both rough and smooth. Once the stems grow up to the areas of dappled sunlight, they grow along branches for a while then grow back down to the ground where they travel along searching for new trees to climb.<\/p>\n<p>The plant became a master of vegetative propagation. As soon as the little broken piece found itself in any kind of soil at all, the nascent aerial roots could immediately turn into functioning underground roots, establishing a new plant wherever it might fall. Because of\u00a0<em>E. aureum&#8217;s<\/em> ability to\u00a0grow in many types of soil,\u00a0levels of moisture, and its\u00a0varying colorations, it was practically guaranteed a\u00a0place at the top of the potted plant school.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-8606\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newprocontainers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Epipremnum_aureum_in_Udawattakele.jpg\" alt=\"Epipremnum aureum\" width=\"440\" height=\"587\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oldm2.newprocontainers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Epipremnum_aureum_in_Udawattakele.jpg 440w, https:\/\/oldm2.newprocontainers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Epipremnum_aureum_in_Udawattakele-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 440px) 100vw, 440px\" \/>This adaptability would serve it well on its journey around the world. Besides practically founding an industry and being a favorite for aquariums and lizard habitats, it has been declared an invasive in the sub-tropics\u2014Hawaii and Florida, to name two. Not only that, it has swallowed whole forests in Sri Lanka and other\u00a0tropical areas.<\/p>\n<p>One thing the\u00a0<em>Epipremnum aureum<\/em>\u00a0gave up along the way, though, was the reliance on propagation through seeds. In common with other aroids, the flowers are tiny and are produced in a group on the columnar <em>spadix<\/em> protected by a modified, often colorful leaf called a <em>spathe,<\/em> which can be as much 9\u201d long. Unlike other plants in its family, <em>E. aureum<\/em> has somehow managed to reroute the energy\u00a0typically\u00a0used for making seeds into vegetative reproduction. In the wild, its flowers are rare enough. In the civilized world of botanical gardens, they are hardly ever seen. And as a potted indoor plant where the \u201cpothos\u201d has come to reign supreme in its juvenile form, flowers are unknown.<\/p>\n<p>The lack of flowers is the source of the profusion of botanical names. Flowers in the aroid family are similar, distinguished from each other by very small, often microscopic differences. The early French botanist, Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, in his great work of 1789, <em><u>Genera Plantarum<\/u><\/em>, listed all the climbing aroids of Southeast Asia as \u201cpotho.\u201d In 1880, Linden and Andre named the plant <em>Pothos aureum<\/em>. In 1899, a French doctor and botanist did name it to its current genus, <em>Epipremnum mooreense<\/em>, but it took another 65 years for the rest of the world to catch up with him.<\/p>\n<p>In 1908, the eminent botanist Adolf Engler placed our favorite little jungle weed into the <em>Scindapsus<\/em> genus. He was able to study some flowers in the botanical collections in Germany and everyone was content with that classification for many years. Finally in 1962, the pothos at the botanical gardens in both Puerto Rico and Miami flowered. Monroe Birdsey, a noted botanist and <em>Araceae<\/em> expert, was able to examine the inflorescence microscopically and realized they were not <em>Scindapsus<\/em> at all. At first he placed them in the <em>Rhaphidophora<\/em> group, but later determined they belonged with the <em>Epipremnum<\/em>. In 1964, George Bunting codified that classification in the Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, botanists in different parts of the world seem to be attached to different classification systems, so you\u2019ll see all the names in use. Because\u00a0the plants in the Pothos genus (around 65 of them) look nothing like our friendly neighborhood \u201cpothos,\u201d that name has been pretty well dropped by the experts in such things. However,\u00a0the landscape and houseplant worlds still use the term \u201cpothos.\u201d Go Figure.<\/p>\n<p>All agree that the plant is a member of the <em>Araceae<\/em> family, also known as aroids. It is also classified as a member of the <em>Monstereae<\/em> tribe that contains 3 genus \u2013 <em>Rhaphidopora<\/em> (100 species), <em>Monstera<\/em> (50 species, native to the Neotropics), and <em>Epipremnum<\/em> (15 species).<\/p>\n<p>The current botanists\u2019 debate about pothos seems to be whether <em>aureum<\/em> is a species of its own, or a variation of <em>E. pinnatum.<\/em> If you look at the mature leaves, however, there are obvious differences between <em>pinnatum<\/em> and <em>aureum,<\/em> so I\u2019m inclined to go with the separate species camp. When you see references to the botanical name, though, they seem to evenly divide between <em>E. aureum<\/em> and <em>E. pinnatum.<\/em> And lastly, for one final bit of the name game, a \u2018silver satin\u2019 pothos isn\u2019t a pothos at all. It&#8217;s actually a <em>Scindapsus pictus.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When is a pothos not a pothos? The answer is when it\u2019s an Epipremnum aureum. Actually,\u00a0there are several answers to this question. Others include when it&#8217;s a\u00a0Scindapsus aureus, Rhaphidophora aurea, Philodendron nechodomii, or even a Epipremnum pinnatum v. aureum. And then there is also\u00a0devil\u2019s ivy, devil\u2019s claw ivy, ivy arum, golden efeutute, hunter\u2019s robe, money [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":8607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"twitterCardType":"summary_large_image","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"https:\/\/www.newprocontainers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/pothos-social.jpg","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[690,689,691,385],"class_list":["post-8598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-plants","tag-devils-ivy","tag-epipremnum-aureum","tag-pinnatum","tag-pothos"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>When Is a Pothos Not a Pothos?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The answer is when it\u2019s an Epipremnum aureum. 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