SPECIAL USES. Excellent house plant, artificial-light gardens.
Pellaea rotundifolia Polypodiaceae Button Fern
Take a piece of wiry brown yarn and string it with shiny, dark-green, leathery polka dots on either side and you’ll have a model of a frond of this tropical fern. The fuzzy stems arch gently but stay close to the soil as the small rhizomes slowly creep around. It’s all very un-fernlike but exceedingly sweet.
CARE. Intermediate temperature, humid, loamy soil, shade, moist.
Pellionia Urticaceae
Two delicate tropical creepers with attractively colored and patterned leaves lined up and lying flat along the thickish stems. No one cares whether they produce their drab clusters of small greenish flowers or not.
pulchra—Precise oval leaves are dusty blue-gray, with broad lines of black over the network of nerves, violet underneath. Juicy stems look lavender-pink.
repens (daveauana)—Young leaves nearly egg-shaped, metallic copper-green, nearly chartreuse on both sides of the center nerve. Leaves of the mature plants become slimmer and pointed on the end, with more green in the center zone and less copper along the edge.
CARE. Filtered sun, warm and humid, loamy soil, moist.
PROPAGATION. Cuttings, division of rooted stems.