Alaska's Home-grown House Plant

Last March I heard from a chum who now lives in Ketchikan. We'd been out of touch for years, and it was fun talking with her---mostly. She did rattle on a bit about how the crocuses were up, and the quince tree in her yard was starting to blossom. I could only counter by telling her the snow behind my house was down to its last three-foot layer, and I expected to see the first rock emerge any day.

I should have asked her, since it was so green down her way, to go outside and pick a house plant for me. It is to do that there; the only kind of conventional houseplant that also grows wild in Alaska lives in Southeast, and the odds are she has some living in the neighborhood. She may even think they're weeds.

Most common house plants are native to tropical or Mediterranean climates---that is, they are naturally adjusted to a frost-free life. Most plants native to Alaska need far more seasonal changes than humans want in their homes. Brought inside and crowded into a pot, they soon fail and die in the unvaried indoor climate.

That's true even of Southeastem's plants, though the region may look like a ballana belt from an Interior resident's perspective. But there is at least one plant with a native range extending into Alaska that can accept household conditions; it's the piggyback plant, Tolmiea menziesii.

Local residents might mistake piggyback plants for infant devil's club---not a plant one would want to take home. Piggybacks do have roughly similar palmate, pointed leaves with hairs on them, but the leaves are smaller, more rounded, and the hairs far softer than on devil's club. They're altogether a kinder, gentler, and smaller plant.

They also have one trait that can only be described as cute. As a healthy piggyback plant matures, it forms new plantlets at the juncture of each leaf and its petiole---the stalk connecting the leaf to the main stem. A well-grown one will be crowded with baby plants apparently riding piggyback on the parent leaves.

That propensity explains their common name and also why it's not necessary to dig one up to obtain a plant for one's windowsill. Just pick a baby-bearing leaf and tuck it into some damp soil so that the plantlet's base is touching the dirt. Keep it moist but not soggy, well-lit but not sunbaked, and before long there'11 be an exuberant potful of piggyback plants of all ages.

Once started, piggyback plants are willing to trail beyond their pots, making them good subjects for hanging baskets. They may be trimmed if they start to look straggly, but don't need pruning. They need little fertilizer, and that only in the spring and early summer.

They do have some particular requirements. Given that the wild plants are found near Ketchikan, it's easy to see that adequate moisture in the air as well as in the potting medium would be important for keeping domesticated piggybacks healthy. And, yes, they prefer conditions a bit cooler at night than people do; they're good green pets if you're trying to save energy by setting back your thermostat at bedtime.

Like the human residents of the Ketchikan area, piggyback plants can tolerate more warmth than their natural habitat provides. But unlike people, the plants need frequent misting to thrive indoors. I don't advise approaching a visiting Southeasterner with spray bottle in hand.