Monday 30 July 2012

Schefflera lovers ... I need your help.

First off, I should start with saying that nothing is wrong with my schefflera. There would have been a few exclamation points and a much more frantic title to my post if anything were to be going amiss with my beloved schefflera "?".  You see that is the problem.  I have been googling like mental all the possibilities of what my treasure of a schefflera is.

The tag reads "Yuan Shan hardy Schefflera" ... but it certainly doesn't look like other Taiwaniana that I have seen.

Recently my friend Loree from danger garden posted about her new Schefflera delavayi  and I thought hmm... the leaves on hers look more like that of mine.  But upon further inspection, no I don't think we have a match... although closer in appearance to delavayi than taiwaniana...

What got me thinking was the arrangement of the leaves.  I notice most of mine have five leaves in an almost star like shape.

But to make things more interesting, just under half of them have 8.  Seeing that I'm not a schefflera expert yet, I am left baffled.

Another piece of the puzzle are the slight red stems just below each leaf.  At least this part is keeping with what I have seen of 'Yuan Shan'

And then there's the blooms....

Still not quite mature so this might not help.  But what about the fact that it's happening in July? Normal?


the tag. Is it possible that this is just an odd variation of the common Schefflera Taiwaniana 'Yuan Shan?'

I don't want to be too suggestive as to sway your opinions in any one direction, but my thoughts have been leaning in the direction of Schefflera Hoi. Could it be Hoi in disguise as 'Yuan Shan?' The mystery continues. What do you think!?!

7 comments:

  1. Hey Louis, I got one of the same Yuan Shan Scheffleras from Monrovia a couple of years ago and it looks much like yours, leaves, blooms and all. Supposedly it's also from Taiwan, thus the full name Schefflera taiwaniana 'Yuan Shan' which would lead one to believe that S.t. 'Yuan Sahn' is a named variety of S.taiwaniana. It looks very different from my S.taiwaniana and my S.delavayi. S.hoi comes from Vietnam but does look more like Yuan Shan. So my answer is...dunno.

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    1. hmmm.. interesting. Good to know. So maybe 'yuan shan' is just really different from regular taiwaniana. Good to know. It's hard when you start searching them on the internet because you see so many different looking scheffleras and sorting out whats what can be hard. You have had yours a couple of years you say,. how has it done over the winter?

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    2. It sails through with no protection!

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    3. Thats what I loove to hear!!! :) It just looks too darn tropical to be legit. ya know?

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  2. Since I don't have a clue I took the liberty of mailing a link to a friend who will. Hopefully I can convey an experts opinion soon!

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    1. YAY! that is exciting. thank you kindly :)

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  3. I also bought one of these. It looks identical in every way to yours, and was also labeled S. taiwaniana 'Yuan Shan.' I do not think it is S. taiwaniana. It looks closer to S. gracilis or S. brevipedunculata, but not quite identical to either of those. A mystery!

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