Stream Corner

The original Ficus elastica, the rubber plant, is seldom seen today. Although the plants we buy under this name are related to the wild original, they have been bred, crossed, cultivated and so changed by the hybridists and plant breeders that they now demand on the whole greater light than their parents. There are, in fact, variegated forms with paler green and sometimes even golden streaks and blotches that to some give them greater attraction.

There are many variegated ivy plants, the additional color being white, cream, silver or gold. Variegated ivies will hold their color indoors but the more light they get the better will be their variegation, and if the plants are taken outside and naturalized on a wall or scrambling along a bank the color variegation will be accentuated to the extent that it is sometimes almost impossible to recognize it as the same plant.

So if we recognize the fact that generally speaking the brighter the plant color, whether of flowers or foliage, the greater the need for good light, then we can go right to the other extreme and discover another helpful fact. It is that in general the darker the leaf and the tougher the foliage the less light a plant will require. It makes sense, doesn't it?

Most of the ivies we grow in our homes will adapt themselves to outdoor living after a brief period and the effect of the better light is astonishing. They grow lusher, more exuberantly and they produce flowers and fruit prodigiously because they have better light.

The rubber plant, a member of the fig family, is rightly popular, for it has a strong, architectural shape, is neat and unfussy in appearance, demands little attention, grows well and attractively and, perhaps most important of all, will tolerate a low light intensity.

Even on the darkest and gloomiest winter day out of doors we shall always find a significant reading in the daylight, yet we shall find it difficult sometimes to get the same reading indoors even on the brightest and sunniest of summer clays!