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| Photo: Amy Norwood |
Last fall I bought a houseplant at a big box store. It was attractive, healthy and priced well. The tag on the plant said “tropical plant.” That told me I couldn’t leave the plant outside over the winter because it would freeze and die in Colorado’s climate. The plant grew nicely in my house over the winter and it didn’t seem important for me to know exactly what plant it was. As spring approached, however, I wanted to identify it so I’d know whether and where I could put it outside in the summer. I also wanted to know the watering and fertilizing regimen it needed for the upcoming more active growing season.
I’d had some luck identifying plants in the past by choosing a prominent aspect of the plant’s appearance and searching Google images with that aspect as the search term. This approach likely won’t produce a definitive plant ID the first time around, but it will get you started for further searching. For my houseplant I searched based on its large leaves with holes. I got two results, monstera deliciosa and split leaf philodendron. After spending literally hours online trying to determine which one was my plant, I continued to get those two results. Which one was my plant?
As Master Gardeners we’re taught that the only way to definitively ID a plant is by using its scientific name. Latin, ugh! I avoided those Latin plant names. But I decided that would be a way to keep searching. I Googled “scientific name for monstera deliciosa” and got my answer. It was in a page on the Missouri Botanical Gardens website (which was authoritative enough for me). The scientific name for monstera deliciosa is Monstera deliciosa. Split leaf philodendron is a common name for Monstera deliciosa. So my plant is a Monstera deliciosa.
Well I thought, is there another plant that’s an actual split leaf philodendron? I Googled “scientific name for split leaf philodendron” and got a very interesting answer. The answer is that there is a second plant commonly called split leaf philodendron (like Monstera deliciosa). This plant’s scientific name was Philodendron bipinnatifidum. With that classification, Philodendron, it was a philodendron. However, this plant was recently reclassified from the genus Philodendron (a philodendron) to the genus Thaumatophyllum (not a philodendron). This plant’s current scientific name is Thaumatophyllum bipinnatifidum.
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| Photo: Amy Norwood |
An article in the online scientific journal Quanta describes the science behind the reclassification of bipinnatifidum. Boiled down, plant taxonomy is now based on scientific information that wasn’t available to Carl Linnaeus. Linnaeus is credited with the start of modern taxonomy in the 1700’s. Linnaeus and his fellow taxonomists used only their observations of plants to classify them. They had no other scientific tools for this purpose. For roughly the last ten years however, taxonomists have had their observations and an array of new scientific tools to support their work, most notably genetic sequencing. Genetic sequencing of plants has confirmed a lot of classifications made by Linnaeus and his colleagues in the 1700’s. But in some cases, genetic sequencing has led modern taxonomists to conclude that reclassification is more accurate. That’s why bipinnatifidum and other plants described in the Quanta article were reclassified.
One takeaway from this is that there are two plants commonly called split leaf philodendron, neither of which is actually a philodendron because neither is classified in the genus Philodendron. This illustrates the Master Gardener teaching that using the scientific name of the plant is the only way to definitively ID the plant. Another takeaway is that the scientific name of a plant you learned in botany class years ago may have changed. You had best look it up to make sure. Finally, I know my plant is a Monstera deliciosa. I can search online with confidence to learn what light, water and fertilizer it needs to keep looking its best.
http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=b605#AllImages
https://www.quantamagazine.org/dna-analysis-reveals-a-genus-of-plants-hiding-in-plain-sight-20180904/