All you need to know about Philodendron scandens hederaceum Heart Leaf

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hi welcome to Swedish plant guys today we're going to give you and all you need to know video about the philodendron scandens or as it's also called the philodendron head array seeum which is basically the same plant it's just named differently in different parts of the world now please if you liked this video share give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel and hit that bell as well so you get a notification every time we put up something new because this channel is all about helping you to take care of all your plants at home as usual we will divide this video up into four parts you have the purchase the planting the placement and the care of the plant and you have the time stamps if you want to skip forward so starting off with the purchase now when you go out to buy this plant there are a lot of names for this plant as I said before the philodendron scandens and the philodendron head array sium or the latin names for this plant there are actually two different ones but you can also have other names for it in Swedish we call it clear tequila and I know that in english-speaking countries they also call it the heart sheet the heart least philodendron and also the sweet heart plant so whatever name is giving to it this is the plant here now this is a small baby baby plants only I'm guessing only a couple of months old because it recently came directly from the greenhouse and it's actually a little bit smaller than then when we usually buy it and that is probably because it has been growing in the greenhouse over the winter and it hasn't grown as much as they would have liked but it is a finished plant so when you go out and buy this there are a couple of things you need to look for now first of all look at the plant overall and one of the things is how many starters or cuttings have they started this plant with so what is a starter are cutting well how many places can is can you find in here where the plant is beginning from the soil so I'm going to try and look in this and I see one two three four five I see six different starting points where every starting point has one or two of these stems coming out from the soil and that is actually the cuttings that they have been planting in this pot here and it can be from one cutting up to 20 or 40 different cuttings in the same pot and of course if you're standing and and not knowing which one to choose in the store always choose the one if they look fine all of them choose the one that has the more the more starters the more cuttings in the same pot because those cuttings if you have many of them will make for a bigger lusher and and more importantly a fuller plant with more leaves and a more dense look to it so choose the one with most daughters and also look at the leaves and see that there are no problems with any of the leaves the newest leaves are always a little bit more light green and there are a little bit more shiny they have a more developed cuticle but the the older leaves are a little bit dollar that is normal that's not something you have to worry about but look at the leaf so that they are completely green that they don't have any type of discoloration or anything on them no spots and no burnt sides or anything just look so that it looks green and lush then you're probably fine what you can also do and what I always recommend you to do is to look at the roots now be very careful when doing that because the philodendron scantiness doesn't have a very extensive root system in the beginning when it's a younger plant so when you try and do like I do here and just lift it upside down and try and separate the roots and the soil from the pot here and then you can just lift it up and look at the roots now the roots should be white like this and they don't it doesn't need to be lots of roots for the philodendron scandens because as I said before it takes quite a long time for it to develop a massive root system so it will probably look like this or even a little bit less roots and that's fine so just put it back in the pot again and then you can turn it around and you haven't destroyed this plant for somebody else if you not choose to take this plant with you now there are a lot of varieties there are a couple of varieties of the philodendron Federation this one is the normal one the scandals or hydration but you can also find what we call the Brazil and the Brazil has a center of the of each leaf here has a color variation a yellow color that divides the green into two parts like this and that is called the Brazil now I couldn't get a Brazil while making this video because it's quite hard to for us to get it here and it only pops up a couple of times a year when it does we usually buy a few of them to be able to have them but I don't have one here right now but it has a yellow line in the middle that's the Brazil and you also have another one that looks a little bit different it because it has a velvety feel to the leaves the leaves have small small small hairs on it so it looks like almost like velvet and that is called the de Mikan or the velvet philodendron the leaves are the same otherwise but they have these small small small hairs on them and also it can have a small small touch of a violet color to it just a little little little bit but it's not the same green as the normal scandens so those three are the usual ones that you can get in the store and but they the you care for them in the exact same way there are almost no differences at least not that we have found while taking care of hundreds of these and this is a very easy to care for plant as well so now that this philodendron scandens it can flower but you will never almost never see it for first of all it needs to be a very old plant for it to flower and I have taken care of thousands of philodendron scandals in the 20 years that I have worked with plants and I have actually never ever seen a flower on any of those that we have taken care of but if you live somewhere else in the world we live in Sweden where the winters inside are we have very low humidity and so on so it's not optimal for this plant but if you live somewhere else you might have seen the flower and the flower is you can all almost miss it because it's it it has a it almost looks like a new shoot let's see I have a new shoot here here we have a new shoots coming out from one of the stems here and the flower almost looks exactly the same it just open is up a little bit and inside you have a white or a off-white pillar in the middle so it's it's green it has a green cover with a white stem in the midsole and it doesn't so you're not buying this plant for the flower and you will probably never get it to flower but if you have one at home that has flowered or a fuse if you've seen it please don't hesitate to make a comment in there or in the section down below so and let us know that you have have succeeded for it because I really don't know anybody that has so it's not for the flower we buy this plant and when you buy this also consider what type of weather you're going to take this home in because this plant does not want a a temperature that reaches below 15 degrees Celsius so if you know that it's cold outside please let the shop where you bought it just wrap it in something in plastic or in paper or something so that you cover it from the cold and especially if you have freezing weather outside you have to cover this otherwise this cells in the leaves can actually explode and you will get damage to the leaves so just cover it up and you will have no problems okay moving on to the planting of this philodendron scandens or header a see'em this is a plant that does not want to stand in water now we will take that up in the care of the plum but it's important to know that when you are reporting or planting this big so never put this in a very large container and the reason is that if you do that if you repot this in a very large container that will mean that when you water it there will be a lot of water that we'll be absorbed by the soil which means that the roots will be moist or wet for a long period of time and it doesn't want that he wants it to be a little bit moist but not too wet and not for a very long time so when you repot this plant always report it a little bit bigger just you choose a pot that is one size bigger or maybe two sizes bigger and then after a couple of years you can report it again and make that transition gradually and also if you can use drainage holes in the bottom use a plastic pot like this with drainage holes that you then put in an outer pot if you don't like this if you want to have a special color or a special material in the pot you plant them but make sure that it has drainage holes so that you know that every time you water the water will go out from the bottom of the pot and the plant will never be standing in water this is the easiest way to make this little guy thrive when you repot it you can use any type of normal planting soil but since it doesn't want to be too wet if you are using a ploy a normal planting soil I would recommend you to mix it up with some for instance pumice or perlite something that will make the soil a little bit get get it to be a little bit more drainage to it so that all of the access water really comes out from the pot but otherwise this plant can thrive in almost any type of soil but it needs to have pretty good drainage not like a succulent but but good drainage you can also put this plant in we have another video on this channel that is called all you need to know about omus where we we actually use almost pure pumice it's a pumice mixture of pumice clay and long-term nutrients but this plant works perfectly in pumice it really loves the way that the drainage works in pumice and so you get that perfect balance between water and oxygen for the roots and you can also put it in a self-watering container I actually have one here this is my own my from a private personal collection at home I have this in a self-watering container like this which means that I don't have to water that often I have also a water level indicator here so I can see that when it's time to give water to the plant as well this works perfectly with the philodendron so if you want to make it thrive just put a little bit more money on the pot you buy and make it a self watering pot or you can create the self watering system yourself we have a video about that as well all you need to know about self watering systems so go and check that out and make your own philodendron thrive and be as well as you can now the philodendron scandal is a climbing plant and in its natural habitat in Central America or in the Caribbean it usually starts on the ground and it needs to climb up using other plants or trees to be able to reach the lights up in the canopy so it can actually grow quite fast but it likes to climb so I have another one here a little bit bigger that is actually climbing on a metal wire Oh nobody saw that so it has a metal wire here that it's that it's climbing on this just makes the plant grow even fiercely even or Faust we have experience of this that it grows faster when it's able to climb then when it's just hanging in a pot because that is the other way that you can have it as well you could just have it like this in a hanging pot and when it doesn't have anything to grab on to it it slows it down a little bit just a little bit but this plant gets so called air roots that it uses to grab onto something and then be able to hold itself on let's say a trunk of a tree on the bark it grabs a hold and then it doesn't let go but it never used it it's not an epithet it's it never uses the tree for anything more than just be able to climb up to the light moving on to the placement of this plant so when you have reported it if you have had if you've reported it when you got it home where should you put this plant to make it thrive well this is a plant that wants a lot of light but doesn't like direct sunlight so here in Sweden the perfect placement for this plant is in an Eastern or a Western facing window on the windowsill to get as much light as possible but you only get a little bit of sunlight during either the morning or the evening if you have it in the East or in the West but you could also place this in a northern facing window where you might not get any sunlight but you will get a lot of lights still that is also a good placement the only place I wouldn't recommend you to put this plant is actually in a southern facing window where you get a lot of direct sunlight for the hottest and the most part of the day what happens then because this is my own personal plant here that I actually have in a southern window wait did you just say that you shouldn't put it there well I wanted this plant in that window so I have it there anyway but what happens then is that it will get a little bit sunburned so you can see here I have it on the windowsill like this so this is what I see and you have the window behind here that is why all the leaves almost all the leaves are turned to this side of the plant here and this is what it looks like towards the window and it has gotten burnt by the Sun so you can see that almost every leaf that it's in direct hit of the Sun sunrays here have some form of sun damage on them and this is because the plant is not able to transport as much water up to the leaves as possible so the cells here actually just dry out and die and this is what we see here with this brown brown spots on the leaves but what I see when I look at the window is this side of the plant and this side doesn't have any burns on it it actually thrives it's looking really really good and these leaves are never getting direct sunlight because it's hanging down from the windowsill like this so I would never recommend anybody to place this in a southern window because you will get it burnt but as you can see here it is possible to do that and also what happens here is that when you put this plant in a very light spot you will get bigger Leafs you will get a foster growth and also you will get smaller Internode's now what is that well the internode is actually how far in between every leaf you have on the stem now this here be from from leave civility from that leaf to this leaf here that is how long the internode is now that internode will become longer if you have it standing in a darker place and it will become shorter if you have it in a light spot so this is also something to consider on what you want with this plant how you want it to look if you want it to be very dense very thick very full then you need to have it very in a very light spot but if that is not an issue for you you don't mind it looking a little bit more leggy a little bit thinner then you can have it in a more darker spots you will get smaller leaves and you will get a little bit of a leg ear plant than that now we have placed this plant in a eastern or a Western window sill and it's getting the right amount of lights but you also need to consider the humidity you have in your house this is not a very fuzzy plant it it can withstand almost any type of humidity however we have noticed here in Sweden where we in the wintertime we get quite low humidity indoors that the plant struggles a little bit it goes dormant during the wintertime and you can actually see that it's having problems it's hanging a little bit and this is because of the low humidity even if you water the plant all of that water is actually going straight down out to the leaves and it's just evaporating straight out into the air so it's the plant is not using that water it's just evaporating so either lower humidity you have the more the plant is struggling with this and what's happening is that it's opening and closing the stomata us on each leaves there are many many many means to motors here which are like you can say almost like windows that can open and close by opening and closing the Simotas its regulating the how much water is inside is transporting inside of the plant now the lower humidity you have the more water is going to evaporate and it will try to close those windows trying to close the stomata us as much as it can but this can make the plant a little bit stressed so if you wanted to thrive it needs to have a higher humidity all year around in Sweden that is a problem so here in Sweden what you can do is that once a week you could take this into your bathtub and just rinse it off a little bit by doing that you also get rid of all the dust on the leaves and you also give it a little higher humidity for a while which makes it able to relax a little bit and then you put it on your windowsill and it starts to get that low humidity and and it will be a little bit stressed but when you give it a new water again once a week you can help it so this is one way of helping it during that season but if you live in a country where you have high humidity all the time you will notice that the plant will love that high humidity much sunlight will make it thrive grow and expand another thing to consider is of course that when you place this on a windowsill if you have a radiator underneath your windowsill that warm heat in the winter time is also going to do the same thing that warmth is actually going to make more water evaporates from the plant so if it's possible move it in the wintertime from the windowsill just a little bit into the room and not directly over the radiator this is what this is one thing you can do to help it from that heat but as I said it will survive low humidity but it will be a little bit stressed from it what it doesn't like is draft so if you know that you have windows that are very drafty or if you know that you open a window all the time during winter when it's freezing outside move this to another spot so that it doesn't get a lot of draft on it because that can also injure the leaves and potentially even kill this plant so just move it to another place moving on to the care of the plant now the philodendron as I said is quite easy to take care of and first of all watering in a perfect world this plant always has a little bit of a moisture next to the roots it doesn't want to dry out too much and it doesn't want too much water just a little bit of a moisture all the time is perfect for this plant now how do we achieve that well one of the things is making sure that you have planted this in a soil that has good drainage or if you planted it in pumice or in a self-watering container because what happens in those is that all the access water will go down to the bottom of the pot or will go away and also as I said when you plan to this if you have holes in the bottom of this plastic pot you can also help the plant by making sure that all the excess water is going out but when is it time to water this plant then how do I know that it is the right amount of moisture for this one way is to use your finger just feel the soil and actually push your finger down just two inches five centimeters down into the soil now if it's dry down to there it is time to water the plants if it's still wet or moist then just wait a couple of days more so you can feel with your finger so when it's when it has dried out two inches down then you know it's time to give water again another way is of course to to water this plant on your sink if you have holes in the bottom you can water it on the sink let it run out completely if you do that all the time you know that it will never have too much water inside of this plastic pot that is another way to make sure that it's not standing in water so that the roots will rot another thing is that when this plot is active it needs a little bit more water than when it's dormant now it will go dormant as I say before it will go dormant in the winter time so in the winter time make sure that you don't water it as much as you do in spring summer or autumn so reduce the amount of water in the winter time and use your finger to feel so that it does get quite dry before you water it again but when spring starts when you see that it's starting to start to grow again then you can add a little bit more water again so that it has the amount that it needs to grow and thrive if you should water this plant too much if the soil gets too wet or if it has been standing in water the first thing you will notice it is that one two or a lot of the leaves are going to start to get yellow it just turns yellow it can be over one day quite fast and all of the leaves is turning the same type of yellow then you know that it is probably because of too much water that you have watered it too much and on the other hand if it if you let this dry out too much what will happen is that the leaves will start to wither will terr it will start to hang a little bit and if you do if you know if you haven't you haven't given it any water yet it will start to wilt err and you will see that all the moisture in these leaves are just going away when you see that you know that ok it's time to give the plant some water it's hanging it's starting to wilt err then it's time to give it water one tip for you is that on a regular basis you can wipe the leaves off you can wipe off the dust of the on the leaves with a microfiber cloth used for cleaning or something just soak it in water and dry off the leaves by doing this you're actually achieving two things you're taking away the dust so that these two motors in the leaves can open and close as they want to and you are also giving the plant a little bit of humidity when you are placing that wet cloth on the plant so do that at least once a month is okay to just dust off to make sure that it can regulate perfectly as it wants to now when this plant is beginning to grow and becoming bigger and bigger the leaves on it will also become bigger as you can see on this plant here it is much older than the one this small one I have here and you can also see that the leaves are quite a lot bigger and you achieve this by just by letting the plant grow the older it gets it gets bigger leaves but these are almost as big as they will get you won't get them to be much bigger than this this is the maximum size but they will won't stay this small they will actually become bigger over time and as I said before you will make you would get these big leaves by placing the plants in much lights high humidity and making sure that the roots don't rot from too much water then it will thrive and he will get these big nice heart-shaped leaves now the philodendron is very easy to prune when you think that it has become too big because as I have this small Potter the self watering pot with this plant I don't want this to become too big and especially I don't want it to become too long because then it will reach down to the floor and start growing on the floor so what you can do is that you can prune this and you can do this almost all of the year round I wouldn't recommend you to do it in the wintertime but you can do it in spring summer or even autumn that's fine and what will happen is that you will get new shoots from where you've pruned it now I have pruned this plant I have made a cut here and as you can see I've made the cut almost what can it be almost an inch from the latest leaf here from this leaf I made a cut and what happened here is that I've gotten a new bud that has grown outs to become a new stem from the leaf node here and but that's not all because when you do this pruning when you cut the plant like that what you're actually doing is that you are removing something called oxen now oxen is a hormone that exists in every all plants and that or that hormone has one specific purpose and that purpose is to make every plant grow bigger and longer and usually also grow upwards now this is a climbing plant so depending on if it's climbing upwards or if it's growing downwards it's not the same for this type of long but the oxen here is actually at the tips of each stem the oxen accumulates here and what that oxen is doing is that it's suppressing all of the other buds that are x6x listing in the different nodes here on the step but when we go in like I did here and prune this I cut I have cut off the top of this plant here I've actually removed some of that oxen and what happens as a result of that see if I can show you better from this one here what happens here is that I have gotten several buds start to grow I have one bud here that is next to where I've made the cut here I've also gotten a bud that starts to grow here I have one here I also have one here so by making that one cut and cut away this part of the stem I will now get one two three four new stems from that one step so by removing that oxen by pruning it a couple of times a year or maybe once a year that's completely up to you by doing that your philodendron Scanlon's will become fuller thicker more massive and when these small shoots here have started to grown I have one here that has grown quite a lot then you can prune that as well when this has a couple of new leaves here I can prune that back and the same thing will happen the nodes in the back here we'll get new shoots and you will get an even fuller prompts so prune it a couple of times but what you what you also can see here and I'll hold this up because I have placed this plant and I planted this about six or seven months ago so it was just before winter I planted this as you can see here the older stem here is quite thin but because I have placed this in a southern window I've gotten lots of light I've gotten a lot of humidity now during spring and I've also given it some fertilizer the new chute that is coming out from this it's a lot thicker than the older one it's maybe twice as thick had I had this plant in a darker spot than I had it this new chute here this new stem would have had the same thickness as the old one but because I've given it more light a lot of humidity in spring and also some fertilizer it is now thicker so you can see the direct result of where you place this plant on the stem of the plant and also the Internode's it will become smaller if you have it in a lighter spots the philodendron had a ratio more scandens doesn't need that much fertilizer but I recommend you to add some fertilizer when you water to the water when you water it during spring and during autumn at least when the plant is active we add some fertilizer this will help the plant to become bigger fuller and help the plant to be stronger also to be able to survive that low humidity in indoors in the winter time so by adding fertilizer and you don't have to add that much just a couple of times a year in spring and in autumn to be able to give it that extra strength if you give it all the time during the growing season from let's say February March until October if you give it all the time when you water then reduce the amount of fertilizer that is on the box of the fertilizer you use so use a smaller amount or you can use the full amounts as it says on the box a couple of times the it doesn't need any more than that now as a lot of indoor plants also the philodendron hetero aciem can get pests and we've seen a lot of different types of pests on this plant however the most usual one is spider mites or some other type of mites and also mealy bugs can attack this plant the mealy bugs are quite simple because you can see them with the naked eye you can see that you have a problem on your plant you can remove them by just taking them away and you can try and use some form of pesticide to be able to kill the eggs from the mealy bugs however mites are a different problem spider mites you can have a small chance of seeing them because spider mites build small small webs and usually you can see those when you lift and look at the back of the leaf here you can see that there are small small webs on the leaves then you know that you have spider mites but if it's another type of mites mites are so small that you can't see them as soon as you notice that you have a mite problem that is not a spider mite problem you have millions of mites on your plant I want to show you here I actually have one here that has mites on it now it's not spider mites so I wouldn't be able to see any webs on this plant however there are a couple of things here that makes me see that Oh something is wrong with this plant first of all when you look at it from a distance you can see that some of the leaves are starting to turn yellow not all yellow all the way around the leaf like I said before that could be a sign of over watering but here there are yellowing from the outside of the leaf and in it's starting to yellow become yellow from the outs so when I take a little closer look to this plant I can also see one more thing and if you can see here on this small leaf here there are small small spots on it and usually it's easiest to see that on the newest leaves and the mites they attack the newest newest leaves first now that is the best part of the plant this is what they want to be able to bite down and suck up all of those nutrients that the plant is pushing out to this new new growth here and that is what we're seeing here those those small small dots are actually bites from the mites but that is small and very hard to see but what happens when they start to become more and more is that you will see more damage to the plant and you will see it like this where you get a discoloration on some of the leaves now mites are quite hard to discover but once you've had you once you have discovered it you can do two things to get rid of them first of all you could take this plant outside use a your garden hose and spray it down quite hard with a one of the harder yeah a harder water beam on each leaf because when you do that the mites actually they get knocked off the plant if you do that once a day for at least two weeks you will probably get rid of spider mites or other mites the other thing is to go out and buy a pesticide and spray this plant with that pesticide and usually after two sprayings you will get rid of the mites but it needs to be at least two different Springs with some time in between because when you spray it it will kill all the active mites but it won't kill the eggs so when you come back for another spring you kill the eggs that have hatched and you might even have to do a third spraying see if there are some small eggs left but those are the two different things you can do but this is what it looks like so you can be able to try and observe and look so mostly look at the new leaves to see that you don't have any small spots on them one last thing this plant can be a little bit poisonous or toxic now there has been a discussion in recent years how exactly how toxic toxic it is but you should know that it if you were to eat something on this plant you can get a swelling of the tongue or the throat you can also get vomiting or diarrhea from it now especially if you have small small children at home that could pull something off here and start to eat it you should know that and also it it has the same effect on cats and dogs as well so if you have cats particularly that likes to play with the plants maybe this isn't the right plant however I know for a fact that cats usually don't like to play with this plant but you should know that it can be a little bit poisonous now that was all for today I hope you've enjoyed this video please like and subscribe and share this video and hit that bell as well so you get a notification every time we put up something new for you now if you have some video you want us to make if you have some plant that you have a problem with at home and you want us to make a all you need to know video about don't hesitate to give us a comment in the commentary section and we will try and make new videos for you and if you have another question relating anything just make it in the comments and we will make Q&A videos that is all for you so until next time I don't

Channel: Swedish Plantguys

Views: 44,253

Rating: 4.9667969 out of 5

Keywords: Philodendron, Philodendron scandens, Philodendron Heart Leaf, Heart Leaf, Philodendron Brazil, Sweetheart Plant, Philodendron micans, Care of, taking care, planting, pesteside, mealy bug, bugs, indoor, plant

Id: 1NxjkI7qJwo

Length: 44min 37sec (2677 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020