Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Calling All Epi Specialists.....Is My Baby An Epi?, 1 by kimskreations

kimskreations wrote:
Hello Friends,

A couple of years ago when I was new to E-Bay (without reading the whole description of course) I bid on a picture of a bloom *lol*. If I remember right, it had either a pink or purple flower unlike anything I had ever seen before. I fell in love with it and won it for $14.50. I couldn't wait to get this beatiful blooming houseplant in the mail! I made the perfect place for it and anxiously awaited my mail lady on a daily basis.

Well......One day she is carrying this TINY box *lol* and I thought "this can't be it". Needless to say, I opened the box and there was 1 huge leaf with NO roots. I was mortified! I put the leaf on top of the TV wall unit and wrote the person asking what happened to my plant? That is when I learned that I was bidding on an unrooted cutting and to READ the description before bidding *lol*. $14.50 was WAAAAY more than I wanted to spend (I don't have much of a plant budget but LOVE them so much).

Needless to say, I was not a happy camper. I let that cutting sit on top of the cabinet for a few days while I cooled off a little. Then one day I decided it wasn't the plant's fault I couldn't read and decided that I would stick the poor thing in some soil.

It is now going to be celebrating it's 2 year bithday and after looking at everyone's pictures here I don't know for sure what I have but it looks so different than what all of the epi's Iook like.

When it first starts out (I knocked a branch over and took every piece I could and stuck it in the soil so I have quite a few babies) is seems to have some hairy (not pricky though, more soft) features. As the stalk matures it loses it's hair and gets leaf notches and the leaves tend to thin out (but not as thin as what the epi pictures look like).

I have it staked but I think it's supposed to flop as you can see in the pictures below the top tends to want to droop but I'm afraid the weight is going to kill the main "trunk".

Any info. on what I may have here would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all,
Kim

This message was edited Oct 28, 2005 8:26 AM