Is it weird that this excites me??

[69_knives]

For a few days now I've been watching these new 'leaves' come into my dieffenbachia plant and today decided to have a closer look. Well to my amazement the crazy thing is blooming. I'd never even heard of a dieffenbachia blooming before.

I rescued this plant 2 years ago when my boss said to throw it out, it was in rough shape and was the front office plant for several years and had never been re-potted until that time. it had a rough start as I forgot about it in a bag for 5 days but it turned out OK.

I planted it in pure vermiculite (hydroponics) and feed it with jobes fertilizer sticks.

The vermiculite doesn't provide much in the way of support so it has a pretty good lean and curve developed.

Yeah, I know my desk is a mess.

 

[blindhogg]

Beautiful plant, I too save all the plants my mother in law attempts to kill.
Chris

 

[Phil Dwyer]

Good go. You should see that stuff grow in the tropics wild and free. It gets pretty big and multiplies, spreading out with massive tubers.

For those of you who don't know, dieffenbachia has a brutal cultural history. I found out via some research because, I got into a huge patch of the stuff once weed whacking with my commercial kick-ass bush-whacking string trimmer. Let me tell you, its nickname, dumbcane, is not for ought! The plant has a sap laden with barbed calcium oxalate crystals that reek havoc on human tissue. It feels like you have acid on you. I got the crap all over me including in my eyes when it splattered through my face screen. Man it was brutal for days and weeks while I waited (which is all the doctor told me I could do) for the crystals to slowly dissolved. Turns out dieffenbachia sap was a choice torture for the SOBs that kept and marketed slaves. They poured it in their eyes and down their throats.

 

[69_knives]

Ouch! I remember reading about the calcium oxalate crystals.

 

[Bufford]

I have one of those growing all these years since the 1960's when I bought it at the supermarket as a kid. It's been cut down and replanted over the years, and shared cuttings with many people. It just keeps on growing. Over the years I have noticed it sprouting blooms, but nothing has come from them.

It's one heck of a tough plant. Chop up a long stem into pieces, and simply stick into soil and watch them grow into huge plants.
They can survive in most lighting environments from dark to bright and survive repeated peeing from the cat too.