House Plant - Prometheus

Not to long ago, -before this year's first frost- a lady I clean for gave me this plant they called Prometheus. It had a fall and looked a little worse for wear, but was still alive and needed a good home. For it was getting to heavy for them to bring in every winter and there was a bug/animal living in it and did not want it in their house.

Now, I have sucker written ALL over my face! I saw the plant and thought that it would look nice in my house. I thought, "I have 3 cats, they would get what ever thing lived in it!" But just encase, I left it out in the mud room/glassed in porch, where it was out of the house and protected from the frost. Which happened the night I took it home. (Talk about timing!) And there it sat til a few days ago when I had it placed in my room.

Since Prometheus has been sitting happily in front of my window, I have been battling cats who think it would be fun to chew on the leaves -not that they are ever feed enough food! And the urge to dig in it!! (By the way this plant is poisonous to eat for pet and humans.) But I sit by guarding Prometheus, making sure he will live to my next move!

As I sit by I wondered what type of plant it was, I had my guesses and thought to see if I could find it! My guesses that it was a palm of sort was off, the guesses that it was in the same family as another one of my plants that my mother killed, wrong. They were all wrong. The only one that was right was that it is a tropical plant of some kind. So I went from there. After searching all over gflora.com I looked in my houseplant book and saw a VERY small picture of a plant that "might" be it but still not finding it by the name in the book. So, I looked under one that I knew would be on there, philodendron. At the bottom of the page I saw Prometheus under the name "Philodendron bipinnatifidum (selloum)."

So there, I had a name of this unknown plant from the Araceae family but not enough info on how big this plant will get and what it likes. So I looked over google for this philodendron. I found this beautiful picture showing what my plant SHOULD look like!




 

But mine looks far from this......

Yeah, it has a long way to go before it gets back to its fulness that it had before it's dramatic fall. Well, I have something I get to strive to do with this lovely plant, Prometheus!

So on ward I went to find out how to keep this plant alive, that is when I read that this plant is poisonous to eat for pet and humans if eaten, and for some people may cause skin irritation or allergic reaction. For me, I can rule out the last part; I have handled the leaves to try to keep them out of the way of my cats. Wiki had little to say other then its history and its common use as a landscaping plant in Florida. It also said that this plant may take Approximately 15–20 years before it begins to have flowers on it, being it is potted. But the site I found most helpful to my quest was davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/37036/. There I found its other names, Tree Philodendron, Cut-leaf Philodendron, and Selloum. (the one in my book was Splitleaf Philodendron)  I also saw that it is a shrub, and can get as tall as 15 feet high and wide, I then recalled that I have seen this plant in Florida before. To give you an idea on size it is talking about......

 

THIS plant is the sad little thing I have sitting in my HOUSE!

Back to the idea of it having flowers I went looking for them, hoping that it would be like a Hibiscuses' flower. No such luck....

Words could not explained how I felt about this.....

At first I thought this was a bad joke, but as I read on blueboard.com, botanicalgarden.ubc.ca, and centerofthewebb.ecrater.com, this is the real flower that blooms in the summer at the base (it seems). So this... weird looking flower will be the flower that my dear plant Prometheus will someday have. (If he lives that long) 

To top that off, these flowers also produce heat when it blooms....