A few years ago we visited Taiwan and had the chance to look around a few towns just outside the capital Taipei. The island is very accessible by car via their excellent road network but you can easily get a glimpse of rural life from nearby towns just outside the capital using their metro system. Taiwan has an amazing array of flora that has provided the world with so many interesting plants for the garden. The genus Schefflera (or now known as Heptapleurum) is just one of the multitude of beautiful group of plants that originated there.
And Scheffleras are abundant indeed all over the island. You don't even need to venture out of the capital to spot them but of course more interesting and potentially hardy ones are best seen outside of it.
I don't remember exactly where we got the seeds from (from different plants), it could be Jiufen area but I do recall a mental note that they were sourced around 200 meters above sea level. On the scheme of things when it comes to hardiness, that is relatively low elevation so unlikely to be hardy but interesting nevertheless. The seeds germinated like cress but getting them past this stage is very tricky as they are notoriously prone to dampening off which was the case. Of that batch only five remain which are fortunately rather vigorous and seems to be doing well. They seem to grow pretty quick and spend winters in an unheated greenhouse.
The seeds came from different plants and although one or two will look identical to each (those coming from the same parent plant) there are still subtle variation from each other at least. For now their exact identity remains a mystery and I haven't taken the proper time yet to investigate to find out. In a way, they are treated as novelty plants and make great part of our plant collection. And a prelude that maybe one day we'll do this plant collecting thing in a more organised fashion one day!
Mark :-)
